Tape and Needle and Scissors and String and
by aragonite
Summary: Never let it be said that Hogan wasn't willing to learn from his enemies, and learning a little German here and there had been really useful for getting his finger on concepts like Einstein's Gedankenexperiments. Not my usual stuff, but a good friend is in a slump and wants some H humor.
1. Chapter 1

Tape and Needle and Scissors and Thread and…

"Cup and saucer."

"Pen and pencil."

"Shoelaces. Both of 'em."

For the past hour this scintillating conversation had been floating around the barracks. As usual, Colonel Hogan could be blamed for this, and "this" tonight meant he was determined to get his men's' minds and predilection for mischief safely detoured.

Never let it be said that Hogan wasn't willing to learn from his enemies, and learning a little German here and there had been really useful for getting his finger on concepts like Einstein's Gedankenexperiments.

After three weeks of nonstop rain he had a duty to his men to keep them busy—he also had a slight (ever so slight) sense of duty toward Klink, who was going crazy with his own men's' meteorological cabin fever combined with too many downed trains that had effectively ruined leave for all of them. (Klink had banned them from the long-suffering local villages for six months following a few events that weren't _completely_ Hogan's fault, so Hogan didn't _completely_ feel guilty about the suffering Nazis, as he wasn't responsible for ALL the bad things that happened to this part of the world. Those wrecked supply lines for example; the Germans were thinking about easing costs with _wooden bullets_ for God's sake).

"Two pairs of shoes. Fancy ones for Sunday and workboots."

"Are you kidding?"

"You can't run through a forest looking like Fred Astaire from the ankle down."

So far things were going splendidly even though it was a barracks full of men dealing with the relentless drum of rain, and the high-pitched _plink-plink_ of their tiny stove heating and cooling as it struggled to adjust to the bizarre mix of fuels it was forced to use to keep them warm, or at least dry the mold and moss off their skins. The coal allowance had been lost a month back with the last train dynamiting, and everyone, even Klink, was holding the wet at bay with anything burnable.

It was really amazing how many things fell under the category of 'anything burnable'. Hogan hadn't known that until now.

It was a mark of victory that Hogan's mandatory workshop of problem solving had transformed the men from surly and itchy to calm, engaged, maybe even sociable. The challenge had been "name two things you absolutely need to escape Germany."

(Well, the official question was "name two things you absolutely need to get by," but with Schultz snoring away in the corner one had to be a little careful.)

So far so good.

And now Newkirk…

If 'participating' was defined by physical presence, Newkirk was participating. He sat on his bunk in perfect tailor's pose (crosslegged, shoulders hunched) with a coat spilled across his lap. Whatever miracle he had to work was a tough one because he had at least twelve leftover twists of scrap threads (none matching) lined up in formation for his use, and almost as many needles.

Newkirk had been cranky for weeks, and it had shaken up every man in the Stalag to hear an _Englishman_ complain about the rain. Klink had flatly told Hogan they _were_ allowed visits from the base doctor and check the Codes if he didn't believe him—assuming he hadn't already burned the Codes in the stove to keep warm. Hogan could have easily stood up to Klink and would have under different circumstances, but a part of him was just too startled to do anything; Newkirk's tirade was still hovering in the thick atmosphere, struggling to rise above weeping clouds.

"Ball of string and coin purse."

"LeBeau, your turn."

The Frenchman scowled. "A cooking pot and a cleaver."

"No spoon?"

"A good chef can do _anything_ with his cleaver."

"Anything?" Baker wondered. "Really? But you need spoons and forks for cooking, don't you?"

"Bah, a good chef can prepare a complete meal without touching anything but his knife. I could do without it if I had to, but it isn't easy to skin a rabbit without a knife."

"Aw, that just takes a little practice." Carter assured him. "I used to just look for a broken coke bottle. Two nicks at the neck and you can just turn 'em inside out." And he mimed a banana-peel maneuver that had a few people shuddering. "Sure easier than skinning a moose!" The other act of mimicry, which reminded far too many people of childhood Christmases spent putting one's fist almost completely through the stocking in hopes of one last treat, was far more palpable in reaction. Carter actually noticed. "What?"

"Well, what's your two secret things?"

"I don't think I have one." Carter said thoughtfully. "I mean, there's always something I can make out of whatever's there."

From the lips of anyone else, the statement would be considered braggadocious. But Carter absently spun his spare shoelaces from weeds in the forest, stuffed his socks with moss to keep his feet warm, brushed his teeth with rock salt, stopped the blood from a wound with a spore-filled mushroom, and used the pennies in his pockets for screwdrivers…the man might have a point. Last winter when the cold had cracked three panes of windows clean off the sill, Carter had replaced them with scrounged up layers of paper soaked in grease until he could beg for the horns off the oxen Klink had bought for the camp's two-month meat supply. Before the gaping residents, POW and guard alike, Carter had cheerfully boiled the horns (in the ox stomach because LeBeau wasn't going to let anything like _that_ sully his cooking pot), steamed and peeled the horns into translucent plate so soft before they dried they could be stapled into the window.

"You know we're losing the war." Corporal Karl said to Captain Gruber, who told him to shut up.

"Hey!" Carter brightened. "Newkirk can have my two. A tailor needs four things, right?"

Newkirk gave Carter a look that could have ignited his brass needles. "Such as what?" He asked with exaggerated patience, proving he was at least listening to the debate.

"Well, you need a tape-measure, and a good needle, and scissors and thread, but that's all you need. Honestly. With that you could do _anything_!"

So honest and heartfelt was this dimwitted admiration that Newkirk found himself smiling much against his will.

"Pack o'needles are the best for what ails." He said at last. "Hardest ones to replace, too."

"Tell me about it!" Carter moaned. "I bent my grandmother's all out of shape because I needed some fishhooks one year…she made me make a whole new set by hand!" And he moaned again.

LeBeau was horrified. "Why couldn't she let you buy another pair?"

"We couldn't afford it." Carter said honestly. "Mom traded our last head of cabbage in for a can of coffee. That's why I used her needles to make fish hooks."

There was a faint, impressed pause as everyone contemplated the levels of poverty that inspired both such destitution, and that it still failed to tar the happy soul that was Carter.

"Have a blacksmith shop nearby?" Baker offered at last.

"Aw, no. She wanted me to appreciate modern technology." Carter shook his head. "I had to make 'em out of bone."

There was another impressed pause, much less faint than the first one. As the relentless fall of rain replaced Schultz' snoring to compensate for the lack of conversation, Hogan began making silent bets with himself on who would speak next if he could only keep himself from talking first.

"At least she let me use the pump drill." Carter continued in his (for him) pleasant memories. "Sure made it a lot easier! Back in her day, her cousins up in the Arctic Circle had to use walrus whisker for drilling holes. Took _forever_!"

"I have no doubt o'that." Newkirk said without blinking. This was exactly what everyone else was thinking. "So was the old lady happy?"

"Yeah, finally. I had to make the curvy one three times, and then she told me I wasn't going to get anywhere in the world if I kept thinking small and had me make a naalbinder too."

Not even Hogan was going to ask what a Naalbinder was. There was only so much ignorance one could confess to in the presence of Carter.

Newkirk finally looked all the way up, which lifted everyone's hopes that he was about to actually rejoin the land of the living. He contemplated Carter thoughtfully in that "fish or fowl?" expression that Carter had earned by exclusive right, and then looked over to LeBeau, as if to silently ask if the Frenchman could put some clarity on this strange being in their midst.

LeBeau could only shrug, and, being French, was the best at the job.

Hogan wrestled with his conscience with a fervor that would have amazed Klink. Contrary to the belief of the unanimous vote, the Colonel _did_ have occasional dialogs with himself on the performance of his moral compass.

Should he ask The Question, or not?

Hogan was fairly unique among Americans in that he had actually survived a childhood spawned from such deep philosophical questions such as "what would happen if I did this?" Carter was another such soul-mate and it pleased him to no end to know he wasn't the only one in the world. But you had to survive the consequences of satisfying your curiosity by beating Consequences to the punch—or moving faster than the Laws of Physics.

Hogan's normal rate of decision was about .00005 of a second, that being just a hair faster than karma's mean average of 9.8/m/s/s.

"Well, Carter," he cleared his throat and tipped his head back, hands folded across his chest (as if that would help him keep warm in this dank hellhole). "If you had Newkirk's tape measure, needle, scissors, and thread,"

Newkirk's face managed to not only collapse into itself by the weight of its own horror, his eyes simultaneously shrank, then expanded into a four-star alarm.

"what could you do with them?"

Carter's face bloomed with the joy of such an amazing question, even as LeBeau quietly backed just a little closer to the plinking stove. As the pyrotech's mouth opened and they prepared for the orchestra of anarchy to follow, Hogan caught the Brit's silently mouthed promise of revenge.

Nothing like a little terror to get a man out of a slump.


	2. Irish Rejected Potatoes and Incendiary C

**2: Irish Rejected Potatoes and Incendiary Cocoa**

Oh, the joys and privileges of being in command. The unspoken advantages of being superior in rank.

Especially on the days when he had to go sign the chit for the prisoners' goods.

Colonel Hogan was kind enough to keep his privilege to himself as he put his least-unworthy socks on his icy feet and stuffed the whole package into boots that were beginning to have second thoughts about the value of a peaceful death. Airmen's boots were the Cadillac of comfort for an American at war, but even they couldn't take limitless punishment. Once these were gone, it would be murder to get another pair even on the black market. Fake diamonds were easier to get than Hood-brand, felt lined, A-6 in Size 12.

He wrapped his scarf around his neck and hoped it would at least keep some of the rain out. The jacket he left open, because Colonel Robert E. Hogan learned from his mistakes, and the last thing he wanted to do was trap the water inside his coat.

Schultz snored peacefully on, or as peacefully as any other meat-machine with extra pistons. It almost but not quite drowned out the continuing drama in the barracks as Carter continued to rise to the challenge of conjuring up all the possibilities in one's rosy life if they had but a tailor's measuring tape, a pack of needles, scissors, and something vaguely within the definitions of "thread." Carter being Carter, his definitions were quite broad and open to interpretation, and Newkirk was beginning to take offense that what he used to keep a shirt together was in the same category as tendons, sinew, the pith of stinging nettles, cow's hair, a groundhog's hide sliced into strips ("what the bloody 'eck is a groundhog, mate?!"), and nicely washed, wrung, and dried intestinal gut from any creature in possession thereof.

Proving it truly was the times to try men's souls, not a single one of his loyal men looked his way as he made it to the door. They were too busy taking notes on the ongoing fight and rotating their turns around the camp stove in hopes of getting another layer of mildew to peel off their clothes. The betting pool had LeBeau down for farming the most resistant breed as his close proximity to steam and heat would kill all but the most virulent strain. LeBeau was saying _brûle en l'enfer_ an awful lot. Baker said good chefs were realists, not wishful thinkers, and you've been hanging around Americans too long, friend.

The door, which rattled and shook and made mouse-friendly gaps in the dry summer, had swelled in the wet. It squeaked, whined and wailed until he finally used his shoulder in a long-forgotten footballer's lunge, which sent him outside a bit faster than dignity approved. It was like jumping into a Cleveland swimming pool. In January. Only a real Cleveland pool would be drained to let malcontents like himself skate in the frozen rainwater on the bottom.

# # #

Hogan was blissfully unaware that the broken-balletesque sight of his voyage across the courtyard to Klink's office was the one and only time his German nemesis had an excuse to smile that day. Proving that Klink wasn't the total Evolutionary reverse-step Burkhalter claimed him to be, the Kommandant kept his amusement to himself.

Besides, Hogan would be irritable enough as soon as he walked in and found Helga gone.

The Colonel cringed at the compression of the door crashing open, followed by the unmistakable sound of a grown body flinging itself backwards to seal it shut. The office door gasped on its hinges and a fresh crop of congealing rain-beads dropped past the window ahead of schedule. Hogan was in the house. And, what a surprise, with all the delicacy and tact of Wagner at a state funeral, performed by John Philip Sousa. Backwards.

He sighed and sank into his chair, eyeing the one comfort of his existence inside a finely carved cigar-box.

"Hello, Colonel." Hogan managed to stagger across Klink's clean floor with a surprising lack of clay in his wake—after a moment, Klink realized the American's boots were stingily holding on to bits and pieces of _everything_ he'd walked upon on his way from the barracks. A drowned rat might look better than Hogan at the moment, but the man had nothing on his face but dignity. The fact that the clay had added a good inch to his height helped.

Sometimes, Klink hated Hogan more than usual.

"I'm here to sign the chit."

"Yes, yes. I know that." Klink waved all of that aside as if it was unimportant. "It's on Helga's desk. Try not to bother her papers, would you?"

"Where is she?"

"Off to her family. Their roof collapsed under the rain and she was given special permission to go repair it." Klink glowered ferociously. "She ought to be back in a few days."

Hogan's mouth fell open and he was momentarily distracted from the tragedy that was a Helga free office. "You had a girl fixing her parents' roof?"

Klink was puzzled. "Why, yes. She asked to."

Hogan paused, taking in the fact that Klink was puzzled at his reaction.

"Isn't that …dangerous?"

Now Klink's mouth fell open. "She's Bavarian, Hogan!"

"Are Bavarians second class citizens?" Hogan had no idea what was happening in this conversation.

"Of course not! If you have a problem with a roof, you go to a Bavarian. They're never afraid of heights and you wouldn't believe the falls they can take without getting hurt."

Klink. Was. Serious.

Hogan realized that he didn't like the sensation of being in the same room as Klink without a single notion of what to say or do next. That he inspired this in Klink daily _never_ crossed his mind.

"On her desk."

"Yes. Somewhere around the lamp, I think. She put it under the Naalbinder." Satisfied that his duty was finished with Hogan, Klink pulled out one of his fast-dwindling cigars and managed to light it against the lingering damp. Considering the damp, lighting his cigar was quite the victory.

Hogan turned to look at the desk but made no move to take a step to it.

"Well?" Klink asked impatiently. "Go on. The desk won't bite!" In afterthought: "But don't you even think of moving that Nallbinder half an inch out of place! She's very particular about it!"

"Is she?"

"A family heirloom. I don't know why she brought it to the camp."

Hogan silently regarded the desk of the absent secretary. He could recognize that there were seven stacks of paper, all of which being held down with the weight of a single object. _Some_ of the objects he thought he recognized, being mysteriously female in usage, but he wasn't sure about four of them.

And the lamp was in the middle of the desk. The exact middle.

"Oh." Klink said as another thought came to him. "Make sure you take _everything_ off the Red Cross list today. The supply room is starting to leak and it looks bad if anything is let to spoil."

There was a pause, not unlike the one Hogan had just witnessed in his barracks.

Klink was infamous for dipping into the Red Cross packages for his own use.

Hogan had never once encountered a Klink who wanted to be rid of the Red Cross supplies of food, drink, and cigarettes.

Especially the cigarettes.

Germans would trade every cigarette they owned for one lousy cheap American Bull Durham. They'd smoke the sweepings off the floor of a sawdust factory and praise the blend because it tasted so much better than what they had.

The fact that the Germans didn't leap to steal all the cigarettes was testimony to the bullion strength of the Black Market, and the fact that any such thief would be beaten severely by his own family for not sharing them. Hochstetter would have them shot and smoke them all laughing at the execution. Bad as everyone wanted a smoke, it was even more important not to be a source of amusement and free cigarettes to Hochstetter.

"Anything else, Colonel?" Hogan asked with remarkable restraint.

"Hmn, yes." Klink lifted his head as a thought struck him. "Is that Englishman still raving? We can't have any trouble here."

Hogan was often mightily confused at the rock-solid belief all Germans had that the Englishman and American species were _permanently_ at war with each other. That they got along was a source of perpetual Teutonic confusion, and when it came to the Stalag affairs, everyone kept waiting for "the other shoe to drop" to launch Hogan and Newkirk into a bloody fistfight. The longer they went without a fight, the worse the anticipation built. Eventually, Hogan had given up trying to explain this because some treasured beliefs are at least comfortable because they are familiar.

"Oh, he's fine. You know how they are. They _really_ like the rain under all the complaining."

"They do?"

"Oh, sure. They _love_ rain! Look how much it rains in England. Think about how many words the English language has for wet stuff: Rain, fog, mist, dew, puddles, frog-drowners…"

"…oh."

Hogan had just been about to relax into the familiar routine of buffaloing Klink, but the sudden and nervous change of expression on Klink's face hinted this might be premature.

"Is something wrong, Colonel Klink?"

"Oh…no." Klink found great interest in his cigar. "But I want those boxes out of here, Hogan! Schnell!"

Hogan folded his arms across his chest and put his dripping head up expectantly. " _Problem_ , Colonel Klink?"

It was the voice. That tone that said I-know-what-you-aren't-saying-and-confession-is-good-for-the-soul.

Klink grumbled. "The Red Cross made a mistake." He said at last.

"What kind of mistake?"

"Something to do with the supply depot in Australia. As if I'd know what Australia has to do with Germany!"

He glared ferociously at Hogan, who wasn't about to admit that he was just as ignorant as Klink on this.

Australia was the one country in the world that could rightfully accuse Americans of being prissy. Hogan tried to extrapolate some information. "They didn't send enough boxes?"

"They sent _twice_ the boxes they were supposed to send!"

Hogan thought about it. He thought about it twice. "Is this bad news?"

"Well it is if the supply lines stay down! You know the procedure as well as I do, Hogan! These might be the last ones your men will get for a good long time!" And by default, Klink. Hogan didn't feel too sorry for him—he had probably already confiscated that extra box sent for the benefit of the fake POW Wagner.

"Or maybe the war will be over."

Klink only scoffed. "Between Burkalter's attempt to marry me off to his sister, the price of coal, and the lack of a decent secretary, I have no time for optimism. Should Hochstetter sail to my Stalag today, he would have to get in line!"

"You're saying that we are either getting an early Christmas present, or a final sendoff."

Klink shuddered, which again made no sense to Hogan. "Either way, the boxes will be your problem! Make sure your cook knows to ration everything up to make them last. If you don't make them last, you'll find yourself eating what we are, and I doubt you'll want to do that!"

"Just out of curiosity, Colonel, what _are_ your men eating right now?"

Corporal Kohler, pacing to keep warm twenty feet straight up in his hightower, was just barely close enough to Klink's office to hear an outraged American yell (through the walls, the rain, a cloud of muddy mist and the tromp of his own boots):

"Horsemeat and WHAT?!"

# # #

"…And you could probably braid the elastic so it doesn't stretch so much. Why wouldn't it make a great snare loop? I don't know if you could put the tape back the way it was after, but you'd get a good pot of squirrel stew out of it and—"

LeBeau put his head between his hands and tried to scream.

"Carter, enough!"

"Huh? Just bein' practical."

" _Making a squirrel snare out of a tailor's tape measure?"_

"Well, sure! They're curious critters. Half the time they do all the work of catching themselves! They wouldn't look at a boring ol' twig snare much, but that yellow measuring tape would get their curiosity up sure! And—"

LeBeau stirred his soup pot, which suddenly sounded like he was using a cleaver instead of a ladle. It was not masking Carter's voice at all, but it did wake up Schultz.

"Eh? What?"

"SCHULTZ! TRY THIS SOUP!"

With gratifying speed, the big man rose to his feet and lumbered through the crowd of POWs to the little cook. "What is it, Cockaroach?"

"It is a salmon chowder. Last of the Red Cross tins. Can't you tell by the smell?"

"You are thinking anyone can smell around the fungus growing on the walls?"

"Just try it!"

As Schultz agreed to guinea pig LeBeau's latest experiment, Carter took off on another tangent with the previous topic:

"…but if they were brass they'd be even better, because who would want to pick a lock in a gunpowder mill with an iron needle? I mean, that's just stupid—"

"Eh WHAT?"

"Don't mind him, mate." Newkirk said hastily. "We were talking about what you can do with needles." He dangled the one he was using by its thread. "Different uses."

"Oh." Schultz thought about getting involved, but changed his mind when Carter started in on the use of needles to prick up a juicy badger carcass for applesauce marinade. He looked at LeBeau. "Cockaroach, have you thought about cooking for the camp soldiers?"

"I am beginning to." LeBeau groaned.

"Why would anyone _want_ to eat a badger?"

"Hey! Badger is great!" Carter exclaimed. "As long as you've got some chestnuts to go with it—"

" _Blaireau au sang_ has no place in my kitchen!"

Schultz was still staring at Carter. "First your Englishman, now your default American. Cockaroach, if you need a safe place to cook you know where to go—"

BANG.

Colonel Hogan blew in, his face lost in the scrunched up action of his pilot's cap, coat, and scarf. This meant that Newkirk, putting a stitch into a crucial portion, jumped as he stabbed his thumb with the needle and added a near-concussion to the top of his head with the bottom of his bunk.

"Hoy!" The Cockney yelled at the top of his lungs. "You're lettin' the wet out, Colonel!"

Schultz looked again at LeBeau. Hogan's statements to Klink had just been confirmed, and the tailor's reputation had swelled to mythic proportions. "The side door to the Soldier's Mess is—"

"—just around the south side of the East Block. Yes, yes, I know…" LeBeau shooed him off.

Schultz made sure his helmet was on good and tight as he left, but he paid Newkirk a deeply suspicious look as he muttered his way out the door. Newkirk, who didn't know he was about to be the biggest topic at the Nazi Mess Hall that night, grumbled Bow Bells imprecations.

"Mon dieu." LeBeau breathed. "Colonel, you have no idea how glad I am to see you. Everyone is sniffing at my chowder and it isn't easy to make a decent dish out of tinned salmon! I had to use carrot tops instead of parsley! And this time of year!"

"Sorry, LeBeau." Hogan was struggling to peel his sodden uniform off so it could go hang with its miserable mates in the always-crammed nook behind the stove.

"Did the Red Cross get here?" Carter asked eagerly.

"…well…so to speak." Hogan answered cautiously. "I'm going to need some volunteers to move the boxes to the barracks." He held his white hands over the warmth of the stove and blew on them, trying to speed up the heating process. "Tell Wicks and Kosznowski to collect all the food tins for LeBeau. The men can keep whatever isn't eatable."

"That leaves out Yankee chocolate." Newkirk muttered.

"That isn't chocolate. That's like saying American cheese is cheese." LeBeau grumbled in agreement.

"Hey!" Carter yelped. "American cheese isn't even American! Its Canadian!"

"Now don't blame Canada on this!" Newkirk snarled.

Hogan sighed. He was tired to the bone, cold, and wet. And all of his men were correct.

American Chocolate was the greasy, compressed D-ration bar of something that may have been chocolate at one time, mixed with almost no sugar but a lot of oat flour, skim milk, and whatever industrial mortar was on sale in Pennsylvania that day. The whole mess was then conformed to the shape of a bar the heft and weight corresponding to the same amount of pig iron. It also had a similar melting point. If you stewed it in a cup of really hot water (try boiling it between the melting point of Lithium and Selenium) you _might_ have something you could swallow. The Powers that Be didn't want anyone to eat the chocolate unless they had to—otherwise the soldiers would eat them too much. Ergo one of the criteria sent to Hershey's was to make it taste "about like a boiled potato." O'Flaherty over on the North Barracks swore this was one potato the Irish wouldn't eat, and congratulations, Pennsylvania. The Molly Maguires are watching.

This was, Hochstetter had once sneered, the exact same reason why President Lincoln couldn't get the Gatlin Gun approved: Because the war chiefs felt the men would fire too fast and waste bullets. Hogan's personal countdown to the utter annihilation of Hochstetter's career may have begun at this point.

If you liked D-ration chocolate, you were either sick with dysentery or _hungry_. LeBeau considered it his personal mission in life to keep either from happening within range of his spatula.

"Wait!" LeBeau exclaimed. "I need soap for the storage room."

"What for?" Hogan wondered.

"The rats love it. They don't know what to do with your peanut butter, but give them a sliver of that soap and they eat it right up. I need decent bait if I'm to protect the food."

"It's all in tins!" exclaimed Cpl. Fisher (newcomer fresh off the boat) from the back.

"Rats can chew through _steel_." LeBeau told the poor innocent.

Fisher turned green.

" _And_ concrete." Hogan sighed. "They're getting close to gnawing that second tunnel through the foundation at the back. All right, LeBeau. Think up some reward to offer the man willing to give up some of his soap."

"Oh, nah! that won't be ham and cheesy!" Newkirk protested. "There's been another bout o'lice next door!"

"It's because they aren't getting the laundry water hot enough."

"In this weather it's all you can do to get anything warm." Newkirk griped. "We're drying soggy wet wood scraps before we can put 'em in the stove, BY the stove!"

"Put some shaved chocolate on top of the stove when they boil the laundry again." Carter offered. "It'll catch on fire once it hits 130 degrees. Lice die at the same temperature as combusting spices."

Everyone was beginning to feel like they'd had quite enough of halting everything just to stare at Carter, but that didn't mean they were going to admit it.

"What?" Carter looked at everyone. "I mean, we _could_ burn the powdered cocoa, but that's the _good_ stuff. Save that for when we want to make a fire you don't want put out."

"God Golden Dove us." Newkirk blasphemed. "He's startin' to make sense."

"Your orders, men." Hogan said. "Let everyone know the situation before the volunteers bring in the boxes—take them straight to storage and then meet back here." He blew on his hands and stamped in his socks, which at least helped squeeze out the extra rainwater out. Small favors, he told himself.


	3. Above My Pay Grade (and Over Your Head)

**3: Above My Pay Grade (and over your head)**

Baker was just a little smaller than Kinch, and wasn't he grateful for it.

The young man slithered into the radio bunker holding his breath with a grimace over the effluvia of Slim's mint chewing gum. The man couldn't live without that stuff.

Weather was not the camp's friend right now, but at least most of them were dealing with it. Baker had kicked around a lot of the country before joining up, and the one thing you couldn't do was yell at the great outdoors and expect results.

He liked Newkirk—most of them did even if they wouldn't let him anywhere near a card game. The man was a little grouchy but Ma said artists were like that. And anyone who didn't call Newkirk an artist never saw the man crack a safe. Or make a ballgown out of a Nazi uniform.

Baker looked twice in the tiny space and hunkered his bottom into the one dryish part of the room. Kinchloe had worked a wonder building this room right the first time, and as he'd been told, the earth had been rock-hard and dry as pumice at the time. Oh, for the days. Smuggling timbers to hold up the sides had been another Kinchloe-miracle, and figuring out how to wire the camp's reception using the Stalag's own watchtower? Sheer genius. Baker hoped to meet him someday when the war was over. And if he was denied that chance? Well, unlike a lot of the men at the Stalag, Baker was quite comfortable with his faith in the ability to finish one's affairs—if not this life, the next would do.

He checked the readings, double-checked the switches, and kept a sharp eye on the main circuit that fed the power through the main box. They weren't getting much news right now, and nobody knew if that was really good news or bad. Sure, they understood they had to pull back once in a while, but three weeks of 'holding back' was a blip on the watches of officers. For thems on the front line, it was eternity.

Once in a while there was a brief interlude of entertainment as various parties tried to send out doctored news. They could be kind of fun. One really remote signal, which they only seemed to get in lousy weather like this, was clearly the work of German freedom fighters who'd worked with the Yanks back in World War I or even earlier—a lot of their phonetics were the same as the camp's, but the differences were telling: 'Quack' instead of 'Queen' and 'Unit' where 'Uncle' ought to be. Baker's excellent memory let him sift out such conversations and he could tell with fair accuracy if the source was using the Army or Navy forms, how old they were, and if the users were actually English, German, French, or Spanish. Depending on how bored he was, Baker took Hogan's orders to "fight fire with fire" literally, and answered back on the open waves with whatever language he felt like using at the time. The nice thing about working in a camp like this, was that someone, _somewhere,_ knew the language.

Languages were fantastic. He loved them. If you heard his great-great-grandmother talk, it was because back in Africa, nobody thought twice about learning twelve languages before they were mature. Or his mother's great-uncle who came back from WWI with British Sign Language for his wife. There weren't enough schools for the colored and there really wasn't much for the deaf. Least of all for the deaf people of color. But they'd learned, and they'd learned how to sign in British. And the French method, which became American sign, and also, the Sign language of the Plains Indians. There were a few times where Baker had saved their bacon with using that sign around Carter. Carter was too pure a soul to keep his thoughts to himself, but luckily for the Resistance, he answered Sign with Sign and it would never, ever occur to him to talk out loud what someone was saying with their hands.

Carter was a lot of things, but he would never be rude.

This suited Baker. When he'd taken his post Hogan had told him that a leader who knew everything was too weak to trust his own men. Baker had taken THAT to heart. Before long he and Carter were working through what they knew in Sign even if their mouths said different. It was fun, even if Newkirk called it 'hand-dancing'. (Baker suspected Newkirk knew some BSL).

Humming to himself, Baker popped his 'phones on his head and toyed with the pleasant possibilities of new equipment. Or a whole box of vacuum tubes for emergencies. Right now they were down to mostly using the "horsepack set" re-wired to acid batteries instead of the standard hand generator. It made things interesting because the Germans had a lot of time and money invested in VHF technology and most of the old buzzards giving Hogan his orders were still insisting on protocols that might have worked back in WWI. Baker was glad the scrounging was up to others. There were too many shifts in which it was all his two hands could do to cover up the holes in their system, and there was only so much magnet wire, insulated wire, and galena to go around. Twice since joining the camp he'd had to hold down the fort with his two hands and yelp directions as the others scurried parts to him from the back storage.

All this for unpowered radio. There were days when he missed the grim simplicity of using a steel razor blade and the lead off a pencil to catch a signal in the bottom of a foxhole. At least when it didn't work, you knew why.

And foxholes could collapse on you. Nah, he didn't miss that. Forget foxholes. Foxholes could give you nightmares.

 _I need more sleep,_ he thought. For a moment he could have sworn there was movement in the room.

The young man looked up, blinking in an attempt to rest his eyes so they would stop seeing things that weren't there.

A soft _plat_ of mud dropped past his face, grazing his cheek, and died ignominiously on his new clean papers.

"Oh, ugh." He muttered, and sat back in silent astonishment as the soggy walls quivered like jelly. A moment later he realized it wasn't the water in his eyes.

O'Brien heard him scream just in time.

# # #

"Ohgod." Baker stammered. For the past fifteen minutes, that was about all anyone could get out of him.

"Is he gonna be okay?" Carter asked.

"He was nearly smothered in an avalanche of mud!" Newkirk cried. "Would you be 'okay?'"

"I don't know. That's never happened to me."

Anyone who swore honesty was a virtue had never met Carter.

"He's too cold." Hogan growled. "Everyone, back off. Baker gets the spot behind the stove." All made space except for LeBeau, who was rustling back and forth through the that cabinet of morbid curiosities he called a spice shelf. "LeBeau, what are you doing?"

"He's cold." LeBeau shot back. "Don't worry, I know what he needs—I need that cocoa!" He suddenly yelped. "Someone tell them to hurry up!"

"You heard the chef." Hogan barked. "I signed for it—Klink should turn them over without any trouble." Or no more than usual.

It was at that perfect moment that the men returned with the first armload of Red Cross boxes.

It didn't take long for them to see why Klink was uninterested in paying himself an aggravation tax out of the portions.

# # #

Back in Klink's office, Klink was wondering if wax cylinders were responsive to the 110% humidity. His precious recordings just weren't holding up. Perhaps it was the thickness of atmosphere?

"You called for me, Colonel Klink?" Shultz asked politely.

"Oh, yes." Klink gave up thoughts of music and returned to his desk. "Tell the men to inspect the foundations. As soggy as this earth is, we have to be careful of subsidence."

Schultz blinked. He was a toymaker, not a Civil Engineer. "For all the buildings?"

"Yes, didn't I say the foundations? I didn't say 'some of' or 'part of'—" He hastily corrected himself. "Don't bother with the prisoners' barracks. Just concentrate on the main buildings with concrete block."

"But we do not inspect the prisoners' barracks." Schultz said sadly.

Klink thought Schultz was even more optimistically delusional than normal if he hoped for a crumb of LeBeau's cooking—even the Frenchman couldn't muster miracles out of muddy puddles and mold—the two most common ingredients in the camp right now.

"They have troubles of their own right now, Schultz. I don't want to give Hogan a reason to come out here. Right now they're finding out about those Red Cross packages."

Schultz shuddered. "Not even the cockroach could make a good meal out of twenty pounds of curry powder."

"You are probably exaggerating, sergeant."

"It is possible. But do you think the shipment was on purpose or a mistake?"

"I have no idea. The Red Cross is supposed to be above petty politics." The lucky, lucky men.

"I was just wondering. It seems cruel to send the prisoners such rations. Especially this time of year."

Klink snorted. "We could go looking for some cheese."

Schultz was the only other member of the Stalag that caught the reference. "I am sure we can all do without cheese right now." He winced. "Unless it is fresh."

"I told Hogan we would be willing to share a portion of our meals with his if he so chose."

Schultz gagged. "I hope the Geneva Convention doesn't hear about this."

"I knew he wouldn't accept the offer, Shultz!" Klink snapped. "But I had to make it! It was the only thing I could do!"

# # #

 **DELIVERED FOR EACH PRISONER OF WAR, STALAG XIII:**

· 8 ounces Mulberry fruit in syrup

· 16 ounces lentils

· 2 oz. soap

· 16 oz. flour (chickpea)

· 8 biscuits

· 8 oz. margarine

· 12 ounces Nestle's Milk (powdered or canned)

· 14 oz. rice

· 1 lb. pilchard

· 2 oz. curry powder

· 8 oz. sugar

· 1 oz. dried eggs

· 2 oz. tea

· 1 oz. salt

· ¼th lb. chocolate

 **COURTESY OF THE INDIAN RED CROSS SOCIETY**

# # #

Back in the Barracks, Hogan's ears were still burning with Klink's generosity. He kept clam and watched his men as various and sundry truths (all awful) dawned.

"I like good curry as well as the next Brit, but this is too much of a good thing!" Newkirk exclaimed.

"There's no meat!" Carter exclaimed. "What's wrong with the rice? Its brown!"

"Bloody entire world is locked up in this bloody war," Newkirk ranted. "And every bloody country gets some sort of rations for their own tastes, and we get the only vegetarian rations ever made!"

"What's a lentil?" Carter wondered. "Don't they use that to feed sheep?"

"Pour some outside and see if any sheep come runnin. I'll take care of it meself."

LeBeau was groaning. This was not the exaggerated "I am an artist" response to Hogan's orders to create the impossible. This was a man insulted by futility.

"What are pilchards?" Someone was asking.

"Can you eat them with curry?"

"Mulberries! Hot dog! We've got fake blood for our next undercover job!"

"I'm allergic to chickpeas!"

"This isn't even real tea. It's green tea! I'm not drinking anything that tastes like Timothy Grass!"

"Yippee! Margarine!"

"This is chocolate?"

"Two whole ounces of soap! Everybody cut theirs in half—we can keep clean AND bait the rats!"

"I didn't know mulberries grew in India."

"Hey, look! Nestle's!" Carter yipped. "Man, you want to talk about big blazing fireballs! All that sugar, I guess—oh. Here ya go, LeBeau. Sorry, Baker."

"Hey, that's odd."

No odder than hearing Private Addison open his mouth.

Everyone, even Baker and LeBeau, stopped what they were doing and looked at their token doorstop. He was staring out one of the more convenient cracks in the wall.

Broughton went over to his buddy and peered. "Hey that is odd. Colonel, you might want to take a look. The Germans are acting funny."

Now everyone was looking.

"They're inspectin' the foundations." Newkirk realized. "Wonder why? Their buildin's're solid enough to hold up to any rain."

"Foundations can shift." Baker chattered. He was grateful to take LeBeau's fresh cup of warm water colored with Nestle and some of the ersatz chocolate. He just tried not to think of how it looked like a cup of runny mud. "Maybe theyr'e worried about a collapse."

"Cor who wouldn't be? And how are we going to deal with a collapsed tunnel? The earth keeps sinkin', the Germans are gonna notice. And we've got a big hole about to open up right between 2 and 3."

Hogan had been thinking precisely the same thing. It was possible his brains were rusty from lack of use, but as so often happened, someone's idle comment was the impetus for his brilliance.

"Baker!" Hogan barked. "Come with me! Right now!"

As the Barracks gaped, Hogan grabbed his staff sergeant and took off running as well as terrain permitted, a sputtering, muddy Baker in tow.

# # #

Klink hadn't expected Hogan to return quite so quickly, or half as loudly. Or with company. He was in his office trying to figure out how to clean mold off his wax cylinder collection when a particular THUMP announced the return of his particular anti-muse.

"COLONEL KLINK! I DEMAND TO MOVE THE LATRINES RIGHT NOW!"

"Hogan, you shouldn't be yelling." Schultz was chiding.

"I DON'T CARE FOR MY MEN TO BE LAUGHINGSTOCKS! RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR MEN, SGT! I DEMAND YOU GIVE US PERMISSION TO MOVE THE LATRINES!"

"What are you talking about, Hogan?" Schultz asked wearily. "And what is wrong with you, Baker?"

"Mud!"

"I can see that, Hogan."

"The ground's getting too soft! It collapsed in on him. Baker's the first one to fall casualty to this rain but he won't be the last." Klink could _hear_ Hogan in the front room as he drew himself up with his hands wrapped around his elbows. "What's the Stalag going to do about this, Schultz? As prisoners we have the right not to drown in a sinkhole!"

"Yeah!" Baker chimed in. "What's K-klink gonna d-do about this?"

Klink opened the door and stared at the incredible sight. Hogan had Baker with him, and Baker was covered with rank mud from head to toe. One of the Barrack's thin blankets was draped over his shoulders and a cup of thin mud steamed weakly in his hand.

Klink's skull throbbed. "Baker, why did my men make you fall in the latrine?"

"Uh…" Baker chattered.

Hogan's mouth was already opening for a fresh salvo of…whatever. Klink lifted his hand and stood. Without a word he went to his cabinet and pulled out a bottle. "Baker, what are you drinking?"

"I think its chocolate."

"I don't think the Swiss would approve." Klink tossed a hefty splash in the mug. "It won't make it taste better." He warned. "But it should keep you away from the doctor."

What the hell. Baker decided his day had just hit a high note. Liquor from a German officer was a pretty damn fine way to summarize his day if he wanted to dwell on the positive. He knocked the whole thing down and gasped for breath. He kept gasping.

Hogan's nose wrinkled. "What IS that?"

"Wutendes Drachenfeuer."

"'Angry dragonfire?'" Hogan translated with the most suspicious look Klink had seen off anyone outside his own family.

"We carried it with us in the high-altitude flights."

"Killer-diller, that's worse than my granny's How-come-you-so!" Baker's admiration was frank and unfeigned. Like a return from death, color rose to his cheeks. His spine straightened and a sparkle came back to his eyes. His lips lost their blue tinge. "Zow! I didn't know you could make moonshine out of cayenne peppers! Wait 'till I tell Mom! She'll take a powder for the day job!"

Klink's monocle fell out. "I am pleased your mother would be thankful for the news, but would you speak English? American is hard enough to understand."

Hogan shook his head. "Are you all right, Baker?"

"Nebber Bedder!" Baker beamed. "Wow." Steam was coiling off his body as his body temperature rose.

Klink bristled at Hogan's expression. "It isn't poison! Unless he was perfectly healthy. It should wear off in half an hour." His mouth tightened. "Now, did my men mock Baker for falling into the latrine?" He and Hogan both respected the First Thermodynamic Law of Command: A soldier with energy to burn off-target was a sinkhole for the collective work output.

Hogan's fabricated response was halted as Baker began humming bits and pieces of _The Pretty Young Girl of Ronceverte._

"Baker, you are too young to know that song." Hogan sighed. "Colonel, we need to move the latrines to a safer spot for now. The rains—"

"Yes, yes, I understand, but I don't know where you could move them." Klink snapped. "Oh—" A thought came to him. "Move them to your Barracks!"

"My Barracks?!" Hogan yelped. "But the smell—"

"It would be the safest place to put them, wouldn't it? You may not appreciate this, but Barracks 2 is one of the drier places in the camp!" Klink locked the cabinet, sat down, and began writing busily. "That is an order, Hogan! Move the Prisoner Latrines to Barracks 2!"

"Don't snap your cap, sir." Baker beamed. "We can do it. I'll help."

"You are not helping."

"I can sing to the men. I know lots of songs for field labor."

"I'm sure you do, Baker…"

Klink sighed in relief as they left. Schultz was still staring.

"The latrine collapsed on him! I haven't seen anything like that since the last war!"

"I was afraid something like this would happen."

"Hogan looks very angry."

"I did tell him to move the latrines to Barracks 2."

"Oh. That would not make anyone happy."

"Well if they don't want to find a sinkhole where the toilet is, they'd best make changes. I warned the Engineers! But did they listen to me, oh, no!" He puffed out his chest and crossed his eyes. "Kolonel Klink, ve asshure you ve know vat ve are talking about."

Schultz laughed. "You have a good impersonation of Hochstetter."

"That wasn't Hochstetter. Things are bad enough without him being here!" Klink's voice dropped. "And he's overdue for a visit as it is."

The Germans shut up, but their eyes cast nervous lines about the room. Hochstetter was a more immediate devil than der Fuhrer…and it was never wise to invoke the devil.


	4. There is No Quiet Night in the Rainy Sea

**4: There is No Quiet Night in the Rainy Season**

Deep in the Germans' mess hall—a place LeBeau was grudgingly willing to consign as one of the lesser-well-thought-out circles of hell—there was a lot of noise. You could almost hear it over the artillery-grade raindrops smashing into the galvanized tin roof.

Banging. Rattling. Thumping. Muffled cursing.

"Every time we let those prisoners into the kitchen, this happens. Every time!"

The grumbler was the cook—He was from a very poor part of Germany. So poor, in fact, that he owned the dubious ability of being able to identify _every_ form of edible vegetation in the forest. He'd grown up next to one of the more pretentious parks under the Kaiser, and the Kaiser had a habit of throwing entire families in prison if a single member trespassed on his territory.

(And as Hans knew, urinating across the fenceline into the hunting preserve counted as an encroachment. He still missed the Donners…even if they had been an indispensable part of WWI's civil engineering projects…)

Hans was treasured and feared in equal measure. There was always a ratio of soldiers that didn't know which part of the potato to peel. But Hans' skills with meat were between 'doesn't bear thinking about' and 'unmitigated disaster'.

He grumbled in his drafty old kitchen. He puffed and muttered and banged things back and forth. That little Frenchman and his foreign ways! How dare he touch his tools of trade? Was there no respect in the profession between equals? For Hans considered LeBeau his counterpart to the prisoners—forced to make do with the miserable ingredients, and serve them up to a sourly ungrateful populace.

"Unbelievable!" He swore as he found another exhibit for offense—the Frenchman had sharpened all of his knives! They hung gleaming on their bar—and sorted according to size! How hard could it be to put things back exactly as they had been?

There was nothing for it. Hans wearily sat down and started on the largest cleaver—it was an excellent beast for skinning vegetable marrows or taking the rinds of very tough turnips. But too sharp by half. With his lips set, he started a long, boring campaign of running the bladed edge across the cutting board.

# # #

The remainder of the day—if "day" meant weather that the Black Forest would call unfit for mushrooms—was spent with the Stalag in a consensual state of misery.

Hogan split his men and put them in short teams—half to transfer the latrine to a spot that was far too close to Barracks noses for comfort—and the other half underground hastily shoring up, blocking up, and doing whatever they could to fill up what had once been a comfortable and useful section of tunnel. When it looked like it was time for a break, he made them switch.

It was back-breaking, grueling work but no-one complained. They all sensed urgency if not impending disaster.

Anyway, some idiot pointed out, it was at least quieter outside than it was inside. The newer prisoners were starting to show signs of psychological breakdown–weeks of heavy cold raindrops on the roof could do that to anybody, but especially to men who had been three feet from the front lines less than two months ago.

The only exceptions to the workplan besides Hogan:

Baker, who had shaken off Klink's hooch in record time and was now sleeping it off to a three-octave, one-man chorus with his uvula and soft palate. Wilson had the throat-drops waiting for when he woke up.

LeBeau, a man under fire, working frantically to produce enough hot caffeine to get the men through this dire period.

And...Newkirk.

The Brit hunkered dangerously close to LeBeau's stirring-elbow, whip-stitching up a contraption at record speed. His earlier depression was gone as if it never existed; he was on a man with a mission, and he was cheerful. This would worry Schultz to see it, even if he wanted Newkirk to snap out of his mood as much as anyone else.

A happy, cheerful Newkirk was a Newkirk presented with a solvable challenge that would discomfit Germans. Even Cpl Fritz, the only man in the Stalag dumber than Klink, knew this.

Ill-feelings were running amuck and morale was AWOL for guards and prisoners alike.

The guards were sopping wet because 'sideways' was a perfectly normal direction for winter rains. They thought longingly of LeBeau's patented, secret, imitation coffee and wondered if their lot would improve if they just took off their uniforms the second they returned to their own dank barracks and stood naked by the stove. They envied the wretched POWs, who hadn't any reason to be outside other than roll call and latrine-digging, and they knew from long, long experience that the mud cladding the POWs was a wonderful insulation.

"Lucky swine." Wolfe shouted over the rain.

"What?" Langenscheidt yelled.

"I said, Lucky swine!"

"I know I'm Langenscheidt!"

"That is not what I said!"

"What?"

"The swine! The swine!" Wolfe had no choice but to carry on–he was committed. "They're no wetter than we are, and they don't have rain falling on metal hats!"

"Eh?" Langensheidt looked over the edge to the prisoners below. "Hah! You know, they look like swine! At least they don't have a tin roof on their head!" He laughed and rapped his sodden knuckles on his own helmet.

Wolfe gave up. he just wanted to live. He wasn't sure what he had to live for, but anything was worth avoiding Hell, which might be what he was seeing in the mud right now.

# # #

The POWs were achy, sniffly, and sweating under their layer of this mud because this natural insulation wasn't letting an atom of respiration out of their pores. They collectively wondered if a few well-placed holes drilled into their shoes would let the sop out from between their toes. They envied the bloody Germans, who could at least _breathe_ inside their wool uniforms.

# # #

In the Kommandant's office, Klink was writing a very stern note to his cigar-supplier. Contrary to all claims and the expensive installment, the humidor was worthless. He now needed a dehumidifier. This was the third in a series of such letters, which boiled down to the company thinking Klink was insane because everybody knew, Germany didn't get that wet—where did he think he was, Podgorica? But Klink's clerical talents had risen to the challenge–he couldn't do anything about Hogan stealing his Cubans, but the complete lack of any decent tobacco could get him sent to the Russian Front if the wrong official came by.

Or Hochstetter. He didn't need cigars–real or withheld–to send him to the Russian Front.

# # #

Hogan was in his office and trying to think of the fastest journey to Stage II of his plans. If he could get the latrine moved, it would be an effective if smelly temporary blind for their attempts to build a new tunnel, plus they could hide their battered radio equipment in the bottom.

Truces could be ended, and the gentlemanly rules of combat were only as honorable as the presiding officers, but a POW's latrine was sacrosanct.

The guards had their own latrine—and loathed theirs.

With good reason, Hogan thought glumly. **Rats loved the POW latrines** —it was a straight shot between the back of the soldiers' mess, and on the other side, a thick bramble thicket. The brush was only waist-high and not worth the effort of trying to escape through the cover—there _was_ no human-worthy cover with that vegetable barbed wire.

That was alright for the non-human–or should we say, inhuman, infernal things that did use the brambles for camouflage and hideaways.

Like the creepy, pallid, humpbacked crickets that lurked in the dark and crawled at you with terrifying purpose when you weren't looking. You'd find them eating dead animals. Or the toads, which looked like clods of earth with eyeballs. Nobody knew what those things were, but they had the guards and guard-dogs united in terror. Carter said they looked like the 'lil' hoppers' back in Bullfrog, and if you ate one you'd be talking to gigantic furry lemon-yellow polka dots that whistled show tunes. Hogan had made it _very_ clear that he was not allowed to test for comparison, and no, Newkirk, we _aren't_ putting it in the guards' soup-pot. Yes, I _am_ a spoil-sport. Part of the privilege of command.

The rats reigned over all these foes, and ate them with relish. Perhaps a daily diet of poisonous toads explained their behavior–they didn't act like the _rattus_ of Hogan's tough childhood. They didn't act like any rats he'd ever heard of.

The latrines were horrible but they were the perfect place to hide and chew on one's ill-gotten contraband or secret stash of chocolate, gum, and the home-made raisin moonshine that nobody would ever admit to making but somehow, the stuff just kept…happening. And since the brambles still had tons of weathered fruit, mummified and hanging on to the vine from summer, the damned vermin had the best living arrangements of every living thing in the Stalag—possible exception being Oscar and Heidi's dogs, who had the closest thing to red carpet treatment.

It was very ironic that the superior supply lines of Stalag XIII was nurturing these foul creatures. Klink had his excellent black market-skimming campaign going on that shorted everybody but himself (and Hogan would give one of Klink's stolen cigars to learn his secret), but Hogan also had his Top-Notch smuggling and supply lines over and _under_ the Stalag thanks to willing POWs and good old Oscar and Heidi. Between all these avenues sang opportunity for the bold rodent that saw anything unguarded and un-poisoned. There was also the third underground grocery store on part of the guards–willing to sell out either Klink or Hogan's pass of chocolate or cheese if they got their own cut.

The guards' latrines weren't all that charming, but they were well-built and clean and built over one of the original concrete foundations. The POWs had a packed-earth foundation topped with old pallets. It was leaky and drafty and cold even in the dead of summer. In the drought season they had to hose it down in case it might burst into flames. The rats found easier pickings with the POWs than the guards. At least, Newkirk said snidely, the rats the POWs caught had more meat on their bones.

Hogan sipped his coffee (you couldn't drink it any other way; Newkirk called it 'cough-ee' because the sheer horribleness of the brew made you cough, and then squeal), and continued to think. Outside LeBeau was struggling to wring another miracle out of rations, potable water, and if you believed his rants, cinnamon-sprinkled sawdust. He was angry that Carter had only given him two of his hot peppers.

Carter didn't often share his hot peppers. His mother mailed them every month with lots and lots of warning labels. Carter's family was large, affectionate, and widely dispersed. One of his cousins lived in some harrowing part of North America where chiles still grew wild.

And these chilies were _wild_. So wild they practically jumped out of the box, fangs bared for mayhem. Tiny as they were, these pea-sized spheres qualified as 'hostile life form' in Hogan's playbook. One of Newkirk's fellow Brits was a Bhutanese, where peppers were classified as 'vegetable' rather than 'spice' and even he shook his head at the little firecrackers.

Through the door, LeBeau's anger was escalating. Hogan was not getting involved. The less of Carter's peppers in the world, the better. What did he even want them for? LeBeau was one of the sanest men Hogan knew.

Hogan struggled to get another sip of coffee down. It got easier with practice.

He was also getting down because the men were supplying him with increasingly dismaying reports on the soil. Who would have thought any amount of rainfall would get through that brick-hard dirt? They needed dry earth to dig if they all didn't want to die, and dry earth was so far as concept as realistic as glass slippers and talking wolves.

Well…Germany was the country for both…

He glared at the tiny bookshelf nailed to the wall. GRIMM'S FAIRY TALES sat next to his mothy reading collection—a surprise birthday present from Schultz. The sergeant had made a comment about idle time was better spent reading than 'naughty doings'. Hogan still didn't know what to give him back for thoughtful revenge.

BANG-BANG!

Hogan beat Carter to the door before the man could filthy up his doorknob. The pyrotech was a walking lump of mud but at least one could see his eyes and mouth.

"What is it, Carter?"

"Aw, how'd you know it was me?" Carter whined. Behind him Newkirk and LeBeau were snickering.

"You left your hat on, Carter." Hogan pointed out the obvious. "That makes the shape of your head a little distinctive."

"Oh. Aw, shoot. Well, at least it kept me from hearin' the rain. Honestly, it's a lot quieter outside–"

"What is it?"

"Oh. The boys wanted you to know we've got as far as we can for the day. The walls of the pit are startin' to, uh…jellify."

"'Jellify?'" Hogan repeated. Behind Carter, Newkirk and LeBeau imitated this, and both looked as confused as Hogan felt.

"Yeah, they jiggle when you slap 'em." Carter nodded, which sent a good chunk of the Stalag's terra firma to the ground with a splat-splat. "Like pipeclay."

"Pipeclay?"

Newkirk sucked in his breath with the force of his mother's Electrolux vacuum. "Gov! Get 'em out if that's the case! Pipeclay's not stable! The walls'll be falling in and they'll be in the bottom–!"

"You heard him, move!" Hogan barked.

Shaken, Newkirk watched them vanish into thin air. Only Hogan's missing jacket and a trail of mud proved they ever existed. He risked looking at LeBeau. He was willing to bet they were both the same shade of bone-white. Over their heads, the relentless rain hammered and hammered and hammered…

"Mon d–." LeBeau murmured. "Now what will we do? The Colonel needs this dug out."

"Oh, uh…he'll think of summat." Newkirk rucked in as much optimism as he could manage, consider the circumstances. "The lads'll need a lot of something hot to drink. Do you think you have enough?"

LeBeau grimaced. "Perhaps. I could do miracles with another pot, but I don't think that old mushroom in the mess hall will let me borrow one for a while."

"Did you sharpen his knives again? Shame on you."

"The greater shame is to Krupp Steel!"

"Well, don't worry. I'll get you one. I'll just pop–" Newkirk realized what he was saying and closed his eyes. "Bloody 'ell. We're all gunna go stir-crazy, aren't we? What's that word Carter uses…cabin fever?"

"Yes." LeBeau assured him with deadly calm. "And this fever, I do not have soup for."


	5. Hogan Has Standards in this Mudhole

**5: Hogan Has Standards in this Mudhole**

Hochstetter was coming.

Klink did not drop the phone, which was a point in his favor. He _did_ drop his monocle, which was almost a proven default reaction.

"Why?" He blurted.

As so often, his mouth got him in trouble whether or not he used it.

The hapless kommandant hastily yanked the phone from his ear and pointed it to the window. In wide-eyed fascination he watched the vibrations from his nemesis rattle the taxed windows.

# # #

Something's going on at Fink's."

Addison had his smuggled field glasses to the window and was peering through the eternal curtain. "He's got his phone pointed to the window and taking turns holding one ear and then the other."

"Hochstetter." Hogan said in satisfaction. "If it wasn't raining we'd be hearing him from here. Baker-coffee pot!"

"Got it, Colonel." Baker yawned.

"What the-!" Addison yelped. "Now Burkhalter's car just pulled up!"

"You're sure it's Burkhalter?"

"He's the only one with a driver too tall for the car-I can see him bent over the steering wheel."

"True. I'm surprised that poor guy can drive at all."

"Plus there's a big fat lump in the back that looks like a marshmallow with no chins and an underbite."

"Yeah, Burkhalter."

POP. The coffeepot crackled into life.

# # #

"You aren't Hochstetter."

"Klink! You are an idiot, but you can on occasion surprise me with good news." Burkhalter sniffed. Klink thought he sounded like a horse, which didn't make him any less uncomfortable. Those who got along with horses fought WWI on the ground. Those that had the common sense to know they were scheming killing machines took their chances with flying deathtraps in the sky. "And being reassured that I am not Hochstetter is most likely, the only good news I will have today."

"I-I mean, I was just on the phone with Hochstetter, and-"

Burkhalter groaned. "What does that little beetle want now?"

"General!"

"Oh, stop gasping, Klink. You look like my sister's goldfish-at least she can keep _that_ alive." Burkhalter threw his damp self into Klink's best chair. "I am here, you idiot, unannounced because I didn't plan to be here at all."

"Oh." Klink said, as if that explained everything. It didn't, though. It didn't explain even one thing. He was also concerned about Gertrude's new and unexpected talent for not keeping things alive. Burkhalter was a formidable opponent in this constant War for Matrimony, and Klink had been trying to brace himself for his own inevitable surrender in the conflict.

Burkhalter was desperate enough to consider Klink an acceptable brother-in-law, which said quite a lot about Gertrude's ability to make friends and influence people.

"The bridge is out again. I have no choice but to deviate to the nearest resemblance of shelter (that would unfortunately be this), and wait for repairs."

"Out again! I hadn't heard a word!"

"That is probably because it went out as my car was about to cross it."

Klink gasped, which, Burkhalter thought, was a little gratifying. Horror was suited for the man's face, and he wore it better than anyone he'd ever known.

"How did that happen? Was it an attack?"

"Only that of Father Time. All of this relentless rain has underpinned the structure-which is not all that sound to begin with, what with those wretched Allies blowing it up on a weekly basis!"

"I think it is more like once every three weeks, sir…"

"Shut up, Klink."

"Yes, sir."

"So. I shall be here until tomorrow, and I assure you I want to be here as little as you want me to be here."

"Yes, sir. I mean…well, yes, sir." Klink fidgeted.

"Oh, save your St. Vitus Dance for Hochstetter. What does that canker want now?"

"I really don't know. He didn't say. He was too busy screaming at me and calling me a dumbkopf."

"How unlike him to be so redundant." Burkhalter never blinked.

"Sir?"

"Oh, nothing, Klink. Just wondering about the unusually high levels of irony today. It must be in the rain."

"If he is coming for a surprise inspection it will not look good, sir. The prisoner's latrine collapsed and they're currently moving it."

"That would explain the odd amount of industry coming from Hogan's side of the camp. One simply isn't used to the Americans doing anything with such enthusiasm without a baseball attached."

"Actually, this is supposed to be their football season-"

"Shut up again, Klink."

"Yes, sir."

"And how could it be a surprise inspection if you know he's coming?"

"W-well, he's done that before, sir."

"Eh?"

"He's told me he is coming for a surprise inspection before coming."

There was a silence (or at least nonverbal communication over the roar of rain), as the general pondered this.

"Trying to catch Hogan?"

"Yes."

Burkhalter realized Klink was actually a man of three talents:

1: Chronic stupidity

2: Masterful emoting of horror

3: Packer of thousands of cubic miles of despair into a single monosyllable.

It was really amazing how little one knew those closest to them.

"That man _really_ needs to find a hobby." The general muttered.

"I think Hogan _is_ his hobby." Klink made bold to say. To his relief he was not told to shut up again, but Burkhalter muttered something about a broken clock and being right twice.

"Look on the bright side, Klink. If Hochstetter is coming, it will surely be for something much, much worse than a surprise inspection."

Klink began to smile, but sadly for Burkhalter's amusements, caught on in time. Still, the horror look was always good for a private relish.

"Sir, I shall impress the Frenchman into cooking dinner. Perhaps that will put Hochstetter in a good mood."

Burkhalter simply stared at Klink. "Has this Chinese Water Torture rinsed out what's left of your brains, Klink? When has Hochstetter been in a good mood?"

"I…well…"

"Oh, stop wringing your fins."

"Fins?"

"You really look like Gertrude's goldfish. I shouldn't be at all surprised if that will be your pet name. Her last husband was Putsi, and he was balder than you!" Burkhalter frowned, thinking hard. "That terrible thing is taking up most of the space in her fishpond. We might have to eat it if the supply lines are late again."

"I suppose you're right." Klink said sadly. "Well…I doubt even LeBeau could make something edible out of our kitchen today."

"I'll eat anything that won't remind me of the Russian Front."

"Er…"

"Er what, Klink? It isn't going to be bread soup?"

"Er, well, not exactly."

"Potato peel pie?"

"No!"

"sprouted, frostbitten onions?"

"Sir, no!"

"Anything with vodka?"

If Klink had been born a woman, he would have clutched his pearls. "General, the most outrageous ingredients we have are a few of the Red Cross packages from India!"

"Curry isn't at all like the Russian Front." For which Burkhalter was grateful.

"We also have stewed horse and the men are marinating a badger."

Burkhalter took his turn with the silence. "The Geneva Convention won't approve, Klink. Have you thought of excavating for cheese?"

"A...actually the thought did cross my mind."

Burkhalter again muttered something about being right twice a day. Klink couldn't hear him very well over the rain.

"My cook says if he grinds everything three times it will all work out."

"Your cook learned his trade from Sweeney Todd?"

# # #

Hogan sighed and unplugged the coffee pot. If it was possible to cast any more despair on his men, he didn't want to know about it. A little denial would be great right now.

"Shoot. The bridge is out." Carter complained. "We didn't even get to blow it up."

"I'm sure you can blow it up again soon." Newkirk soothed. "Think of the challenge in this rain."

"Hey, yeah!"

"What is that stuff about cheese?" Slim gnawed on his latest quid of gum.

"It's got to be a codeword." Fisher insisted.

Hogan pursed his lips-his version of a 'what the hell' shrug. "We haven't cracked it yet," It was very aggravating to keep hearing a reference to something that he didn't know about. Even inside jokes could be important when counterfeiting authenticity and they had to impersonate Burkhalter and Klink enough to know they didn't know what the deal was with their weird comments about cheese. They'd figured out all the little jibes and comments, but that cheese thing...They'd hear it every so often, and it smelled like an inside joke or shared misery or the two mixed together, but not a single clue to show for it.

LeBeau was trying to glare Newkirk to death. Carter was bouncy again. There was no good left in the world. "Badger. They're eating badger!"

"Badger's good!" Carter protested.

"We cannot possibly be talking about the same thing!"

"You aren't." a hungover Baker assured him. "American badgers are pure evil with racing stripes. I've seen them bite through a box turtle shell. They have tusks, so help me, and they swear at you the whole time they're going for your throat."

LeBeau turned pale at the thought.

Carter shook his head. "Baker, you don't hunt badgers up close!"

"Yeah? What's the best place to shoot a badger?"

"From the other side of the river."

"Colonel," LeBeau said very calmly, very quietly, "I know where to find a dull cleaver and I am not afraid to use it."

"Take it easy, men." Hogan rubbed at a tenacious ache between his eyes. "Burkhalter's here, Hochstetter's coming…are we at a stopping point with the new latrine?"

"Yes, all we need to do is skid it over the new hole. After we get the radio in."

"God." Newkirk prayed. "It'll be right next to us! We'll smell everything!"

"At least we won't have to walk far anymore."

"Andrew, would you please stop trying to cheer us up? You're not good at it!"

Baker kept to the topic. "Hochstetter means inspections."

"Yeah." Hogan muttered. "On the other hand…"

"Colonel?"

"He might not want to make much of one. He's pretty fastidious."

"That's putting it mildly." Broughton agreed.

Hogan pulled his folded arms to his chest. "Let's think. Where are we on the tunnels? We dug them according to the safest possible plan for subterfuge. That means we don't have to worry about a tunnel opening up right in the middle of the camp."

Everyone nodded. Tunnels needed to be under structures in order to avoid any accidental discoveries…like, for example, sinkholes. The men had created a series of tunnels that connected all the important structures of the camp from the underground. The only areas that were dug 'out in the open' as it were, were under that ghastly tangle of carnivorous blackberries and a hedgerow of spindle trees on the other side of the Klink's half of camp. Hogan had begged Klink to let them cut down the spindles for firewood, but Klink had told him it was against the Geneva Convention by proxy to let his prisoners burn poisonous wood. Until that dark day, Hogan had no idea there were so many, many toxic trees in Europe. And people thought _Cleveland_ was dangerous? Hah. When the war ended, he was going to make a fortune as a script-consultant for DETECTIVE STORY MAGAZINE. Or better yet, WEIRD TALES.

"Forget the latrine for now." Hogan said at last. "It'll keep. How long will it take to fill up our tunnels?"

"All of 'em?" Newkirk shrugged. "Three hours tops, and that's if we stop for a smoke break every hour."

It was a fairly simple thing to fill up the tunnels-they'd done that so often Hogan was convinced they could do it in their sleep. Not all of the camp was dirt-there were frequent encounters with rocks-large ones-and it had been easy to stock them up here and there in the forest. Roll the rocks in and sneak back into camp through The Inchman, a tunnel that got its name from its claustrophobic narrowness. You had to do it sideways. Without your boots.

"Let's do it." Hogan decided. "All the tunnels. Even the Inchman. Addison, Broughton, Slim…Walters…coordinate. Draw straws to see who gets to get caught outside…"

# # #

Several things happened that day:

The men blocked up the tunnels in record speed. Addison drew the short straw, so he was the one who sealed up the last of the tunnel with rock in the forest, and then turned himself in. The guards took one look at the drenched, miserable specimen of humanity, and didn't have the heart to taunt him. What honor was there in a complete lack of a challenge?

Schultz turned Addison in to Klink, who was weary enough to groan and order him 30 days in the cooler. Burkhalter wondered out loud if Addison needed a mental health check because anyone thinking to escape in this mess was clearly not in possession of reason. Even for this Stalag. This led unfortunately to an anecdote about a first-person encounter with a cold-maddened wolverine, running through the lines and straight into the teeth of a blizzard, found the next day frozen with its teeth still clenched around an exposed woolly mammoth. The good news about this grisly rumination was, everyone within earshot for once didn't have nightmares of _drowning_ that night.

Per protocols, Klink ordered Hogan in to inform him of his man's failed escape. Hogan squelched his way across the courtyard, and with chattering teeth scolded a bright blue Addison for trying to escape the most unescapable camp in Germany. Burkhalter decided a miserably wet Hogan was worth nearly falling into the river.

The guards tried to lock Addison in the cooler. They really did. But the damp had saturated the concrete, and the cooler really was a cooler. It had frozen solid.

Schultz and the guards marched Addison back to Klink's office, where Hogan was using Klink's serving of brandy to Burkhalter as a chance to steal Klink's soggy cigars. Even though they weren't smokable, it was still the principle of the thing that mattered.

Forced to create a punishment for Addison, Klink ordered the man to give his Red Cross supplies to Wilson's patients in the influenza quarantine, and told him he could just enjoy what the guards were eating. He could choose between horse with badger, or badger with horse, or just horse, or just badger. No, you can't choose 'hunger strike', soldier.

Addison slogged to the quarantine under guard and handed over his boxes to a surprised and grateful Wilson. On the way back, the guards patted him on the back and gave him the consolation prize of one of their Swiss chocolate bars. It was not, they were anxious to tell him, his American chocolate. His teeth would survive. Addison thanked them politely, went inside, and was promptly waylaid by grateful comrades ready to dispense charity in the form of cigarettes, live raisins, and pretty much whatever he wanted. He chose LeBeau's Chocolat au Maya-Carter had given up his peppers to a noble cause.

# # #

Klink was feeling even more despondent than usual. It had nothing to do with Hogan, so it was little wonder he didn't really know what to do with his feelings.

With the lamp burning low the Kolonel sat in his chair tucked away in the darkest corner, all the better to feel sorry for himself.

As so often, Hogan came around to ruin that.

"Hello, Kolonel." Hogan stood in the doorway, bold as brass, with a peculiar looking jar in his hand. "I thought I'd return the favor for earlier today."

Klink blinked, and switched his monocle, but the devil American was still there. His jar was smoking, which added to the infernal impression "What do you mean, Hogan?" He asked. Befuddlement was one of his favorite emotions regarding the American, not the least because it was familiar.

"For Baker." Hogan hoisted the bottle. "That stuff really helped him."

Klink bristled. "Did you think I would poison him?"

"No, no, of course not. This is a thank you for the occasion."

Klink rolled a few things in his weary mind but could find no precedent where Hogan was offering him a drink. "That is very kind of you, Hogan, but I was not expecting—"

"That's why we have words like 'surprise' in our vocabulary."

Not for the first time, Klink was left watching Hogan take control. The American managed to magic up two cups to go with the bottle, and poured copious amounts into each. It was dark; no light shone through. It was thick, like borscht. Steam curled in the cold room, and the scent was quite unique.

Hogan grinned and knocked a huge gulp of his portion down in one toss of the elbow. Klink hoped the infernal man wasn't immune to whatever toxins that might be swimming in there, and followed suit.

Flavor exploded on his tongue. It was chocolate and berry-sweetness and an initial eruption of lemony fire subsiding to sullen coals.

"Ahhh, LeBeau." Hogan happily took another drink. "No alcohol, but not needed. This stuff'll wake anyone up and kick their heart."

Klink stared at the cup. "What IS this?"

"LeBeau's Chocolate. He learned it from a Mayan. Carter donated the peppers."

"Carter's peppers?" Klink gulped. "Is that safe?"

"I have no idea, but consider our circumstances."

Klink couldn't disagree.

The two men slowly worked their way through the canteen. It was rare when they could just be two men in control of their own men, but it tended to happen whenever they were invaded by the outsiders. Like Burkhalter. Hochstetter. Certain glamourous Russians.

Hogan didn't mind Klink in times like this. He was a class-act jerk, but his love of paper-pushing meant the camp ran better than any others he'd ever heard of. And getting everything down right on paper meant Klink's critics couldn't argue with him. A man who sliced red tape at every chance he got, Hogan could never quite get over the fascination of Bureaucracy done right. It was weird.

He noticed a familiar book on Klink's desk.

"Are you still reading Mirriam-Webster?"

Klink sniffed. "It is part of your history. I don't know why you don't appreciate it."

"Probably because the priests were always having me copy out of the dictionary whenever they disagreed with my learning methods." Hogan riposted comfortably. "I bet you I can list 40 synonyms for 'evil' off the top of my head."

"I have never known anyone who could lie as well as you, Hogan, without dressing it up in words. Your methods are unique to me. Your language is the only uncomplicated thing about you."

"And you know English better than most people I know—American, Canadian, British and Australian. Why do you keep reading dictionaries?"

Klink didn't often give Hogan a look that said, "I can't believe you're that dumb," but he did now. "The war will end someday, Hogan. Besides, I like English. It is very comedic."

"So is life."

"You just proved my point."

"I'd offer you a cigar for that, but they're not worth smoking in this damp."

"Did you steal them for a mercy killing?"

"Nah, I let Carter have them. He does something with tobacco when he wants to talk to the Rain Spirits. I think he's trying to get them to lighten up."

Klink shuddered. "I thought he was from a dry part of America. Don't they view rain as sacred?"

"I guess too much of anything is bad?"

"This is very bad indeed, Hogan. I don't know if we'll get our supplies in time for midwinter. I never thought I'd miss bombed trains and dynamite under the bridge."

That was a sobering thought. The supplies were necessary for everyone in the Stalag. Hogan didn't want to contemplate even one week without the hope of medicines and the nearby villages gave everyone a pair of knitted socks for Christmas—a truer act of love was never seen. LeBeau was never without a red scarf because his throat was vulnerable to infections; every time Newkirk had another earache they wondered if he'd lose an eardrum.

"We're under siege." Klink said with doomsdaying accuracy. "Rain...Burkhalter...and now Hochstetter is coming for some reason."

"You got enough food to serve?"

"Oh...yes." Klink shivered and took another, bolder drink. "The rain rinsed another pair of badgers out of their setts."

"Another?"

"Right in front of the dogs." Klink's jaw stuck out. "It saved us the bullets."

Hogan swallowed hard. "You're going to serve Hochstetter badgers the dogs killed?"

"Well, we couldn't let the dogs eat them! They have diseases!"

"Oh..."

"That's why you have to cook them first. Hans is saving the fat for the medical office. Tell Wilson we'll have plenty if he needs it."

Hogan mentally swore on a stack of bibles personally autographed by the Pope not to tell Wilson about this conversation.

He took another drink.

And another.

Klink had finished.

Hogan topped off their cups again. By now the peppers were doing their magic. The sensation was starting to return to their toes.

Hogan continued to think.

Klink had just given Hogan fair warning of the arrival of his arch-nemesis. In the subtle language of command, Klink was letting Hogan have time to plot his next failure.

Not that Hogan _wanted_ to go to war on Klink's behalf, far from it. But Hochstetter's treatment of Klink was far past what was considered good taste among schoolyard bullies. The man liked to see anyone squirm, and Klink had no choice but to get up from Hochstetter's eternal abuse just to get more of the same treatment. Hochstetter had a personal grudge against everything that Klink was: good birth, great education, connections, and was a social emblem of the nobility's past adapting to the modern Reich.

The fact that Klink didn't want any of this privilege because he'd never been consulted on his desire to be a noble didn't matter. Klink would have been happy to throw all his rank and file over the side if he could just live in peace away from the rest of the world and their toxic politics. And Hochstetter hated him for THAT, too.

Hmn...well, ok. Maybe Hogan liked to go to war on Klink's behalf once in a while. Just to vent off the steam from being a prisoner away from the more straightforward war lines.

And...they were both pilots.

Hogan would take a beating from Capone's molls and their nail files before he let a grounded rat like Hochstetter think he was better than Klink.

Standards. Hogan had them.


	6. Bureaucratic Engineering

**6: Bureaucratic Engineering Requires Prototypes of Three**

"I think we closed the tunnels just in time."

The men took one look at their fearless leader, and as one, moved away from the stove. Hogan yanked off his coat and thrust his hands in supplication to the blessed heat.

"Klink said the dogs killed badgers coming out of the ground. That's how wet it's getting."

"Cor." Newkirk breathed. "That's a new one! Badgers comin' out but none of the rats?"

Hogan actually stopped dead in his tracks. "Yeah..." He said slowly. "That's a point." Weird, he thought. Come to think of it, they hadn't seen rats in a few days. That wasn't SOP at all...

"We're going to get trench foot, aren't we?" LeBeau tried to accept the inevitable.

"Hey." Carter sat up. "Sir, can we ask Klink for the fat? Badger grease is incredible for what ails you! Slap a coat of that on your feet and-"

Out of the corner of Hogan's eye, LeBeau clutched his ladle—purely in self-defense.

"…completely worth the trouble of messing with the guts. Which doesn't make for bad cordage…"

"Didn't we tell you to shut up about this?" Newkirk tried to say between the words, but his timing was off and Carter merrily racketed on without hearing a thing.

"What are we gonna do about Hochstetter, anyway?" Newkirk asked. "He's always a bleedin' mess when he's here, and this time we got a bleedin' mess all over the place!"

"There's really nothing we can do." Hogan admitted. "For once we're going to just be normal POWs."

"-and the baculum would make a good naalbinder."

"Andrew! AAAGH!" LeBeau screamed at the top of his lungs. Silently. He didn't want Carter to ask him what his pain was; they'd be listening to him apologize all night.

"Cor, that'll mess with his tiny little mind." The Cockney was laughing. "Bein' normal!"

"No kidding!"

"I don't think I've ever really been a normal POW." Carter worried. "Most of the time I just pretend we are."

"Just pretend you're normal again." Newkirk suggested. "For you, anyway."

Baker cleared his throat. "Sir, HQ got your last message. They told us to just sit in radio blackout until proper conditions are restored."

"How'd you get a signal?"

"Razor blade and pencil lead."

"Oldie but goodie!" Slim clapped.

"You should see what I can do with a chunk of quartz and a rubber band…"

"Are those your two items for escape?"

Hogan chuckled. He really was proud of his men. They were all resourceful and resilient. "Everyone on your best behavior. We know Hochstetter's temper isn't the greatest. If anything is going to tip him over the edge to the extent of putting us all before a firing squad, it'll be now!" The Colonel turned to LeBeau. "LeBeau, I want you to be ready in case they call you in for some last-minute miracles in the kitchen."

LeBeau didn't want to go outside any more than any creature without gills, but he nodded. "They are cooking badger. Perhaps I can make a dessert that will apologize for the main course."

"Newkirk, how goes your latest masterpiece?"

"Not bad if I do say so meself." Barracks 2's klepto-tailor held up a length of mothy wool neatly patched into something recognizable as a trapezoid. "All it needs is a good coat of mud."

"I don't know where we're going to find that." Someone said sarcastically.

LeBeau snickered but averted his head in time to prevent a cough from seasoning his soup.

"If you're contagious we'll tell them you can't cook." Hogan warned.

"I'm fine!" LeBeau huffed.

"Are you sure about that? You look a little red."

"That is because everyone else in here is blue from cold!"

He had a point.

"They'll call him." Carter prophesied. "They've got no choice, what with Burkhalter and Hochstetter under the same roof. Hans won't cut it."

Hogan's eyebrows went up. "Why so sure?" LeBeau knew how to cook, and he was top-grade—he was to kitchen chemistry what Carter was to gunpowder, or Newkirk to jobs in product loss prevention. But the guards were still German, and four out of 10 Germans were too proud to put up with a hot-tempered little Gaul who cooked fancy dinners for the Kommandant even as he steamed the kitchen with comments over unplanned Teutonic breeding, general unsightliness, barbaric hygiene, and how their country's true superpower was to urinate in a bottle and call it wine.

"Cor, you don't know him, 'at's what." Newkirk shook his head sadly.

Hogan laughed. "How bad can he be?"

Rain hammered overhead as the Barracks fell silent.

"Bad?"

"Oh…well…I wouldn't go that far…" Baker cleared his throat. Condemned to be the ambassador, he shuffled his feet. "I mean…he's not a bad guy for a kraut."

"Actually kind of nice." Newkirk nodded. "For a kraut."

Hogan had to cock an eyebrow at that. Once in a purple moon, he was reminded that there were some English out there (mostly the working class) who remembered the German ties to British nobility, and hated them all the more for it.

"It's just…" Baker took the plunge. "He's _vegetarian_."

Vegetarians had lost a lot of nobility since Hitler joined their ranks, but Hogan felt that wasn't it.

"He doesn't know how to cook meat." Slim added.

"How hard can it be?" Hogan wanted to know. "You open a can, put it in the pot, and turn the stove on."

It had never occurred to him that anyone in another Catholic-dominated country (and if you didn't think Cleveland wasn't its own country, you hadn't been there) would be ignorant of the basic food groups. After all, it was all so _simple_ : boiled cabbage, boiled oatmeal, boiled potatoes, beef, bacon (Easter ham, Christmas turkey), fish for Fridays, and of course, egg noodles for the day after. Thanks to a few convent-raised relatives he had come to think of tomatoes and garlic as exotic, exciting seasonings. Buttermilk was as indispensable to the table as griping about The Troubles. Technically, Hogan could eat anything without too much complaint, but don't ever take away his milk by-product.

With all this in mind, only a few seconds had passed. Hogan was still waiting on a reasonable answer to his reasonable question.

Maybe it wasn't so reasonable…

They were looking at him the same way his old platoon had looked at him when he learned he was being sent to Seneca Rocks for paratrooper jump training in February, and pack an extra twenty wool socks.

"It's below the Mason-Dixon Line," he'd laughed. "How cold can it be?"

And they had given him _that_ look. The one he was facing right now. With no word of explanation. Because he would find out soon enough.

He soon found out it wasn't as cold as it _could_ get—but it was plenty cold. The famers preferred sheep to cows because the former could grow their own sweaters, and the only store for miles in the Panhandle kept a glass jar of pickled bears' paws for hungry travelers and he was still willing to swear a great horned owl stole the fully grown turkey the camp was raising for the holidays—an eight-foot black ratsnake hiding in the warm barn months out of hibernation had already cleaned out the chickens, and then the owl and the snake found each other one really noisy night and nobody felt like turning on the lights and catching them in the act…

To this day the winner of the match was unknown, but there was a worrisome trail of owl feathers over the field, drifting from the sky and neither contestant was ever seen again…

…and there was a Polar Bear Club amongst the population and weren't they glad another Buckeye was here, because Charlie couldn't rejoin the team until he'd gotten over that silly heart attack and the first jump in the river was next week as soon as the ice thinned enough that they could break it up…

Hogan began to get a feeling that "how hard can it be" in regards to cooking was about to have identical results to his old "how cold can it be" question.

"Uh, oh." Slim cleared his throat. "I think I see the infernal black car, heading this way."

"You can see through this rain?" For it had, unbelievably, gotten worse.

"The lights are on."

"How do you know its Hochstetter?"

"The left headlight is still out."

"Still? Why hasn't he fixed it by now?"

"Because he wants his men to remember how it got broken."

As one, everyone in Barracks 2 shuddered. A few folk discreetly made the sign of their personal deity.

# # #

Hochstetter hopped out (he never moved under anything less than a full horsepower), and scuttled through the mud to Klink's office. His luckless driver struggled to keep up, loaded down with his commander's supplies.

Hogan shook his head. He recognized that rain-blurry square shape.

Hochstetter had brought his desk.

This was not a good sign.

One of the odder customs about Germany, Hogan had learned early on, was the extreme lengths mannerly people went through to assure you that they weren't Satan—or even a devil in the pantheon. One of the more interesting manifestations of non-ungodly behavior was the insistence on oak tables and desks.

It was rude, rude indeed to wave at someone in a tavern. What you did was hammer your knuckles on the top. Oak was considered holy wood and therefore intolerable to the profane (no matter how much they were drinking).

"You mean, they knock on a piece of oak to prove to you they aren't a devil in disguise." Hogan had repeated this lesson for the fourth time in as many minutes to his language instructor.

"No," Pyetr sighed dramatically. "They aren't proving anything to you. They're being polite so you don't have to wonder if they're a devil in disguise."

To this day, Hogan wondered how entrenched this custom was—and was a Russian expat the best German language teacher the government could provide? But the custom was indisputable. Every proper German loved his oak. It was on their money, their art, acorns carved on their umbrella handles, their forests...and respectable folk had an oaken desk. Klink had one. Schultz had one in that claustrophobic cubby-hole he called an office. Helga had one. When any dignitary came to visit they either used Klink's desk—as well as his office—or they used the small office set into the guest quarters.

And then, ladies and gentlemen, may we present you with Hochstetter.

That evil little Bavarian (how he could have anything in common with Helga scalded Hogan's sense of right and wrong), took delight in carrying his own camp-table with him, a collapsible box with adjustable lid and legs and held his receipts and papers and spare handcuffs, rubber hose, torture devices or whatever he needed to get through the day.

His desk was not oak.

He made a point of letting people know it.

# # #

"He's got his desk." Newkirk muttered.

"I see that."

"What do you think he's up to?"

"No good, of course…just what I don't know. Baker?"

"Coffeepot, sir."

"But WHY would he be here?" The Englishman wondered. "He's got no reason! We haven't done anything lately!"

"Who could? The rain would have stopped us before we started!"

A crackle and POP alerted them to Baker's post.

"Coffee's on!" He crowed.

# # #

"KLINK!"

Prepared though he was, Klink still responded with beautiful speed. He stepped away from his desk and put his back to the wall for safety.

Burkhalter remained in Klink's best chair. Damned if he would let Hochstetter steal it.

"Move, Sergeant!" Hochstetter brushed past a cowed Schultz. "I want all of those prisoners mustered for a work party first thing in the morning!"

"A work party?" Klink stammered. "What for?"

"Work, you dumbkopf!"

Burkhalter closed his eyes and sighed. This meant unfortunately that Hochstetter noticed him. The little officer slapped his heels together and saluted so crisply that rain flew off his elbow and into Klink's face.

("A work party?" Newkirk turned pale at the thought.)

("Shhh." Carter whispered.)

# # #

"Sir, I cannot order the prisoners to work under these conditions. The Geneva Convention—"

"Is it any less tolerable for our men, Klink? No! The roads are collapsing and we have an important convoy in two days! With the bridge out we need to stabilize the embankments!"

("Convoy?" Hogan's eyes narrowed.)

"Convoy?" Burkhalter repeated.

"Yes." Hochstetter snapped. Vitriol sparked off him in little red waves.

"I heard nothing of a convoy." Klink bleated.

"Shut up, Klink!" Hochstetter snarled. "Of course you heard nothing, it was a secret!"

"Oh, well." Burkhalter said under his breath. Hochstetter was too busy glaring Klink to death to notice. "Hochstetter! What is the purpose of this convoy? I have heard nothing either."

"The weather has reduced the amount of Allied bombings." Hochstetter explained with marginal better manners to the general. "We have an important prototype that must be taken to Berlin as soon as possible."

"The trains would be much faster, wouldn't they?"

If there was anything Hochstetter hated more about Klink's stupidity, it was his unpredictable periods of lucidity.

"Dumbkopf! The trains are too easy to bomb!"

"B-but our roads—" Klink gaped. "And you just said that the weather has reduced the bombings-"

Hochstetter cut him off. "Since you seem incapable of appreciating this moment, I shall use small words. Shut up is very small. The new prototype for the Maus has been approved for final inspection before the Fuhrer."

To put Hochstetter's words into perspective, a bit of comparative grammar is in order.

Superman = Kryptonite

Slugs = salt

Vampires = garlic

Americans = rugby

Germany's hopes of military success = the Maus

Burkhalter winced. "That monstrosity?" He snorted. "Hochstetter! The only good thing the Maus is for is to make Germany a laughingstock!" (In Barracks 2, Newkirk was nodding his approval of that statement).

"The new engine prototype has addressed all the problems with the last model."

"Did they find a way to make the tank lighter?" Klink asked innocently.

"Shut up, Klink."

"I don't think that could be at all possible." Burkhalter grunted. "We are talking about a tank with 220 mm skin, designed to throw a shell over two miles!"

"Bah! We are not delivering the whole tank! Just the engine! It is lighter than the entire piece, I assure you!"

Klink's mouth opened. He had thought of a question. A look at Hochstetter made him change his mind.

"Hogan's men will begin labor in the morning. There will be eight hour shifts and the road will be cleared and stabilized! I shall be in my usual office, drafting the tables!"

"I shall inform Colonel Hogan—"

"You will do nothing of the sort! It is not our duty to make things comfortable for him! The Maus is our greatest achievement in the wake of the Triebflügel!"

Burkhalter and Klink both recalled their last sight of Hogan, which was soaking wet, shaking with cold, and trying to scold Addison around chattering teeth. It had made Burkhalter almost nostalgic for the Russian Front, and neither officer would have liked to apply 'comfortable' to the man.

Hogan was infuriating, yes, but it was an unpleasant fact of war that one's enemies can be better company than one's allies. In that letter, Hogan was the perfect German definition of 'honest enemy' as Hochstetter was the opposite.

# # #

Hogan felt a headache knocking on his skull. Of all the stupidities Germany had to create on their paid time, the Panzer Maus was right up there with the Triebflügel.

Around him his men were wilting in horror and various expressions of disgust.

"Why would we _bother_ blowin' up a Maus?" Baker marveled.

"Hey! You can always blow up something!" Carter defended his passion. He thought of what he'd just said. "Except that. Your best bet is to crash a low-flying plane into the broadside. That might do something."

"The Maus is the largest tank in the world. This engine prototype will be a lot of the weight-ratio." Baker mused.

"But that's the thing!" Newkirk hissed. "They're HEAVY! Too heavy for roads like ours! That's why they tried to make 'em amphibian!"

"Yeah, but not _this_ kind of amphibian." Broughton reminded him. "They can only drive under flowing water, not flowing mud!"

Hogan nodded. "Berlin must be scraping the bottom of the barrel for fresh ideas if they're going to kick this dead horse again."

"That dead horse belongs in their stewpot." LeBeau shot back. "Colonel, this is still a very difficult thing and very dangerous."

"I can imagine."

LeBeau shook his head. "Perhaps the Germans are feeling anxious about something."

"Airfield." Hogan snapped his fingers.

"Eh?"

"Airfields. What's the priority target for our bombs?"

"Airfields." Newkirk whistled. "Aye that! What with the clouds the planes can't hit the targets so well! That means the Germans got ter make their hay while the sun shines and move their stuff before the weather clears!" A moment later he caught his own words. "Well. Not sunshine, but you know what I mean."

"They're needing something to ramp up the protections for the airfields. That's why they made those crazy Triebflügel prototypes. I guess they're giving up on them at last."

"What are those things? I've never heard of them." Carter blinked.

"I'm surprised. Its something you'd love to blow up." Newkirk giggled. "If the Germans didn't beat you to it!"

"Aw, come on. What's a Triebflügel?"

"Imagine, Andrew, a prototype plane so awful that Klink would have the engineers shot for the good of the Reich."

Carter tried to imagine it.

"I…can't imagine it." He said in a small voice.

"So, I guess they've shot down the notion to use the Triebflügel, and the Maus is their next plan."

"But what IS a Triebflügel?!" Carter wailed.

"They tried to cross a rocket with a plane." Hogan broke it to him fast.

Carter's face compressed with the effort to think.

"They put rockets on the propellers to make 'em go at superspeed." Newkirk clarified.

Hogan couldn't resist. This was a way of paying Carter back for being…Carter. He went to his office and came back with a little model of his old plane. Kinch had made it for him before his 'transfer' to Prisoner Exchange. He sat the plane on the table so the nose was straight up in the air.

"That's how they were parked. The planes would take off like rockets, thanks to rockets on the propellers. VTOL. No airfield was needed for taking off."

Everyone waited.

"Did…did they…but…Boy? I…"

Everyone leaned forward just a bit, all the better to take in Carter.

"But…how did they _land_?" The pyrotech yelped.

"Ah," Hogan smiled. "That's exactly what they said to the engineers."

"Who are they?"

"The pilots."

Carter's jaw dropped. "They built planes that could take off, but couldn't land? Are they allowed to do that?"

"Sadly for us, no. That's why they're trying the Maus again."

"With probably the same results, just on the ground." Newkirk opined sourly.

"You never know. They might have gotten the design right this time." Fisher slurped his cocoa loudly.

Newkirk hooted in derision. "The problem's the design, period. The Maus is a bloody nightmare on tracks. All the Soviets need are a hint of where those metal elephants are before they move in and bomb the field into hamster shavings!" He put down his needle to accept a hot cup from LeBeau. "Thanks, mate." He paused, staring at Hogan.

Hogan had drifted off into space.

There wasn't a soul in the Stalag that didn't know what that expression meant. "Sacred Irish Lunacy" covered it pretty well. Enemies fled from that look-not to mention a few friends.

"Nice idea, Newkirk." Hogan smiled.

And the smile grew.

And grew.

It stopped just before it could reach his ears, but the message was clear:

Colonel Robert E. Hogan had uncovered a bit of divine inspiration from a casual complaint. Again.

# # #

Burkhalter and Klink watched Hochstetter go, their minds benumbed.

"The rain's gotten to him." The General decided. "Snow would do the same thing to the brain."

"Is that plan at all possible?" Klink fell into his chair and nervously polished his monocle. "The Allies have lowered their bombings because of the weather. What better time to deliver a prototype by train?"

"Klink, as much as I hate to admit you are making sense..." Burkhalter closed his eyes. "The war is not going well, as you know. It would be less of a strategic risk to get the hybrid prototype to Berlin by road-or so someone is saying. The Reich is degrading into barking jackals and the loudest voice is the only one heard. That jackal has convinced everyone that the train is a better risk than the roads."

"But…Sir, when I was a pilot…" Klink wrung his hands. "That is to say…train lines tend to be straight on flat terrain. All but one of our roads would answer the needs of the convoy!"

"And which road would that be, Klink?"

"The Roman Road. It may be thousands of years old, but it was laid down on geologically stable foundation, and reinforced with meters of solid rock. Even a direct strike from the Allies' blockbuster bombs will do no more than disrupt a few _Ruthe_."

"When did _you_ become our resident expert on Civil Engineering, Klink?"

(Hogan was glad Burkhalter had asked that question. He wanted to know too).

"Oh, I wrote a paper on it in Aviation School."

Burkhalter considered this. "Why _roads_? You were a _pilot_!"

"The Master insisted." Klink said sadly. "He said that was the only iron eagle I'd ever see."

"How very peculiar." Burkhalter never blinked. "We must have had the same Master. Mine told me I was only suited for a career in fencing."

(Schoolmasters were jerks the world over, Hogan and his men thought)


	7. 1 Hochstetter or 1,000 Rats

**Part 7: I'll See you One Hochstetter and Raise you 1,000 Rats**

Hogan broke for mess. LeBeau was a saint. He'd put together a hearty meal of tinned salmon chowder, poured over bowls of rice, and tomorrow's dinner was soaking in the back: Chickpeas with dehydrated vegetables. Barlough, who had claimed allergies to chickpeas, it turned out, didn't know a 'chickpea' from a 'chinquapin.' "People call them chinkys!" He protested in his defense. "Better safe than sorry!"

"What is that?" Newkirk wanted to know. "American pilchards? Nova Scotian eels?"

Hogan sighed. "Heaven." He said softly. "They're heaven."

Carter frowned. "That sounds familiar." He put his bowl aside to dig through his things until a dictionary popped out. He paged rapidly through, and his eyes lit up. "Oh, ok! They're like baby chestnuts, only they're really tiny and sweeter. Grows on bushes. Hey, I bet they'd make a good chestnut flour if you ground them up!"

Lebeau threatened him with his ladle-too bad for him, Carter had seen this threat so often it had lost all power to cow. "Corsican food is not allowed on my stove!"

"Huh?" Carter was clueless. "I was thinking how my family makes flour out of acorns and chestnuts."

The ladle slowly sank down, but LeBeau was glaring without blinking.

"They're delicious." Hogan murmured. "Carter, is that your English/German dictionary?"

"Uh, yeah, it's the only one I have."

Hogan plucked it up and began paging through it.

"What are you looking for, boy?"

"Cheese."

Newkirk, ever the voice of gloom, shook his head. "We are never gonna figure that one out, Colonel!"

"Well, maybe someday. We just have to pay attention."

No luck on the 'cheese'. What a surprise. Hogan narrowed his eyes at the little book.

No answer.

Alrighty then...

A bored Hogan was a danger to himself and to others. He paged up the next word in his vocabulary for which he didn't have a definition.

Technically, no-one could fault him this. After all those years of having to copy down the dictionary in school for misdeeds various and sundry, there just wasn't a lot of words he didn't already know.

And he didn't know what a naalbinder was.

He'd slithered out of the chance to learn earlier by asking Klink to get the chit off Hilda's desk (on the grounds that he was dripping wet and he didn't want to leak on to her family heirloom). Klink had grumbled and gone to get the chit, which had given Hogan the chance to steal another one of his now-lousy cigars.

So, yeah, he'd missed the chance to see what a naalbinder was, but he'd managed to lift Klink's last 47-ring gauge Rodriguez.

...naalbinder wasn't in the dictionary.

Why wasn't he surprised?

Hogan's brain complained at him for sending them on another dead end. He told brain to shut it, and, just to make it work a little harder, paged to the B's for the last, uncontested word he'd encountered: baculum. He had no blessed idea what that could be, and if Carter wanted to make this naalbinder out of one, it might tell him what it was.

He found baculum.

And was soon sorry he had.

Andrew and Newkirk were waging a spirited debate on which country produced the better playing cards, and LeBeau was scrubbing his pot out for a fresh round of something hot for the men. Everyone else was watching the debate and distributing their monetary assets on who would win. No one, thankfully, saw Hogan clap the dictionary shut and retreat to his office with a face grown suddenly pink about the cheeks.

# # #

Although no one knew it at the time, the palaver about food would bear profitable fruit later that summer. Seeds had just been planted inside Hogan's overly-fertile brain for a scam that would persuade Klink's permission to give the POWs their own community garden, a means to sell resulting produce in town to fund the Stalag's lack of medical supplies, and an elaborate system of smuggling microfilm inside Carter's prize Lakota squash. The scheme would be a fantastic success, as the harder the shell of a squash the better the storage capacity, and the denizens of Hammelburg had been struggling with this problem for generations.

Decades later, their descendants would visit Hammelburg to find the residents still cultivating Carter's vegetable progeny with the sure-fire sales guarantee, "Harder than a Gestapo's head—Proven!"

But that was months in the future, and Hochstetter was still free from concussion. Which, conversely, meant he was giving them all a headache.

# # #

Pvt. George shivered inside, his arms clutched around his chest. "Colonel, we thought you might want to know something screwy's going on at our end."

George lived in Barracks 3 and it was his knack for hydraulics that was responsible for all the hidden periscopes in camp. The Germans tried to avoid him as much as possible because of his tendency to get hit by lightning. Hogan often wished he could let George in on their more active campaigns, but for obvious reasons, no watch invented would work on him. It would conk out in a few hours, and forget a compass, barometer, or anything delicate. The one time he'd been allowed in Klink's office the cuckoo clock had gone off, as if in protest.

Everyone including Hogan paused with bowls of rice frozen mid-air. George didn't report screwy things; George WAS a screwy thing.

Hogan gave the man his dinner and asked what he'd seen.

"Well, we were putting the latrine on skids so we could slide it over here," George nodded vaguely in the direction of the new latrine, "and Mischief thought he might as well try to see if he could retrieve something he'd dropped in the hole last month."

In other words, contraband. God only knew what it would be this time; Mischief had earned his nickname; Newkirk couldn't stand him on the grounds that there actually was honor among thieves, thank you very much.

Hogan braced himself. He knew what was about to follow with his question. "So, what happened, George?"

George stuffed rice into his mouth and gulped it down, paused to blink in awe, and cleared his throat. "Well, Beanstalk had found some tongs, or maybe he just made them, they looked like old coat hangers, but I know we're not supposed to have them. They looked like coat hangers—"

"—and then?"

"—so Mischief was using the tongs and Beanstalk was holding on to him so he could lean over, because he didn't want to fall in, and then he gave up and asked Purple to do it, and Purple said why me and Mischief said because he was the only one without a working nose, and Purple wanted to know how much it was worth and Mischief said his socks and Purple said ok, and then he sneezed all over everybody and Mischief said if he did that again he wouldn't get anything, so Purple took the tongs and Beanstalk held on to him—Beanstalk is our holder because he's got those long arms—and he finally found the whatever it was Mischief had dropped, but I don't want any of it, to be honest! And Mischief was so glad to see it he got too close and now the guards can't help us pull him out of the hole."

Behind George, Newkirk was trying to rub the new headache out of his head. Anything involving Mischief gave Newkirk severe psychological head trauma.

"Uh… 'can't?' LeBeau frowned. "Is my English missing something?"

"Nope." Newkirk was peering out the window. "They're laughing so hard they can't even stand up straight."

Now Hogan was rubbing _his_ head. "Are you asking for our help, Private?"

"Huh? Oh, no. We're tying our spare pants together for a rope. Well, HIS spare pants. We're not using ours. Once he stops throwing up he ought to be able to hang on."

Hogan took a deep breath. "You came over here to tell me all this? This is the screwy thing?" For Mischief, it was fairly normal.

"Mn? Oh, no. Just wanted to let you know, the rats are gone."

"What?"

"From the latrine hole. Nothing. Zip. Nada. 86. No rats."

Hogan tried to process this. He really did.

"Are you complaining?" Newkirk wanted to know.

"Nope. But its screwy."

Hogan said nothing. He was still trying to think.

George put Hogan's empty bowl in the sink-bucket and burped. "Thanks! That was almost as good as Two-by-Four's cooking!"

LeBeau's outraged squawk was just barely behind George's departing back.

"Doesn't anyone have a normal name over there?" Cpl. Fisher (the FOBO rookie) complained.

"They stick to nicknames so they can trade them back and forth when they need to give alibis." Newkirk said wearily.

"This isn't good."

Everyone hushed to look at Hogan.

"Gov?"

"There should be rats. Lots of them. So where did they go?"

No one could think of an answer. Hogan was right. Rats were the bane and terror of the camp. They carried disease; they stole their food, they smelled to high heaven even when they weren't in the latrine, and they loved nothing better than to chew on their precious radio equipment.

"Can we use the soap then, gov?" Newkirk held up his hand. "If there's no rats to bait, I'd like to get clean, plus I need to soap up me needles. They're going to rust in this damp!"

"At least the moss has grown over the holes in the roof." Baker offered. "I'll take a steady drip to an indoor waterfall any day."

"Oh, poor Schultzi."

The fat sergeant was stomping to the door.

"LeBeau, pour that man some cocoa." Hogan hissed. "Time for some intel."

"Colonel Hogan!" Schultz barked. "I am to tell you that your men are to stay inside the barracks tonight; no naughty doings, no naughty business, no naughty nothings, no-naughty-no-thing, do you understand?"

"But Schultz, we _never_ go outside after curfew!" Newkirk was wide-eyed hurt at the accusation. Master of the stage that he was, tears shimmered in his eyes but Schultz told himself it was probably just rain coming in through a leak in the roof.

"You know what I mean, Cock-ney. You and your cock-a-roach friend are to stay indoors for your own safety. Oh. Danke!" Schultz' eyes went wide and his hands curled around LeBeau's cocoa mug.

"But Sergeant Schultz," Hogan straightened his back and got into the poor man's personal space, "We were going to fix Hochstetter's broken headlight."

"Yeah!" Newkirk chimed in. "It's a sight for sore eyes, it is!"

"I do not think Hochstetter will want you anywhere near his staff car, Hogan. Besides, he seems to like keeping it broken."

"That's not regulation." Baker protested.

"No, but when his men see that broken light, they remember it is broken because he drove down his own aide for stealing his coffee."

"Aw, I think he just did that to be mean." Newkirk was firm. "Hochstetter's coffee isn't that good."

(" _You_ know something about _coffee_?" LeBeau whispered to Newkirk.)

"(I know what's what sells on the black market, mate." Newkirk answered.)

Schultz closed his eyes. "I hear no-thing. I see no-thing. I KNOW NO-THING!"

"No, really. The beans are undersized and broken. Second-rate stuff, mate; almost as bad as Yankee coffee—"

"Sgt. Schultz," Hogan broke in just before the man could bolt, "You said our own safety. Are the dogs loose again?" He injected just the right amount of fear into his voice; the Germans needed to keep believing the dogs were trained to attack them.

"No, Hogan, thank goodness. It is the rain. The earth is shifting. Kolonel Klink is concerned that there will be mudslides."

"Mudslides?" Carter blinked. "But the ground's flat."

"It wasn't always flat, Carter." Schultz explained patiently. Next to Hogan, he had the most patience in the camp for Carter, but that was probably because Carter was still a big kid and Schultz had six of them at home. "It used to be quite ah…bumpy." He made a wave motion with the hand that didn't have the cocoa in a death-grip. "The Kolonel, he remembers when this whole area was lumpy in the Last War. There was a Cheese Cave here. Your bombs made it as flat as it is now."

# # #

The men needed some time to fully appreciate Schultz' words.

"Am I the only one who thinks it is a ruddy awful idea to build a POW camp on top of a _cave_?"

"What's a Cheese Cave?"

LeBeau closed his eyes and held his breath, counting to ten. Twice. LeBeau could only stare in numb pity at the pyrotech. "Andrew, where do you think cheese comes from?"

"Cows? Goats? Sheep? Yaks?"

"What, no buffalo?" Newkirk asked sarcastically.

Carter's eyeballs nearly fell out of his head at the thought. "Milk a tatanka?" He was white at the thought. "Um...NO!"

Hogan, who recalled the less-glamorous-but-still-very-dangerous Eastern Woodland Buffalo of Ohio, cleared his throat. "Cheese caves are hollows of stone built inside the earth. They're used for ripening cheese. When there are caves they use caves, but when there aren't caves, stone rooms are built and then covered with earth."

"...oh." The pyrotech pushed his chin into his hand, deep in thought. "That's weird."

"What, you never thought about cheese?"

"Uh...no. Half the family hates it. Really, really hates it."

"They hate _cheese_?" Lebeau could not imagine such a thing.

"Yeah. I mean, I ate cheese when I was stuck in the schools, but my grandparents said I smelled like a dairy farm when I came home. So I stopped eating it. American Cheese is awful, but at least it doesn't make me smell bad-Wait a minute!" Carter sat upright. "Maybe Klink is wrong about the location! "He's wrong about a lot of things."

"Klink was a pilot." Hogan said firmly. "There's only so much you can get wrong when you're up in the air, and this forest has a lot of landmarks from before WWI. We had to study those old maps when it got harder to get newer ones." He scowled, deep in thought. "Thing is, I don't remember seeing anything like old structures when we were digging the tunnels."

"Just a few bits of dressed stone here and there." Baker commented. "But I thought they were just parts of old farmhouses, or a spring."

"Parts of the Cheese Cave?" Broughton hmm'd.

"Why would you bother with building a cave over here?" Carter was baffled. "There are tons of natural caves over here."

"Andrew...what do you know about caves?" Newkirk wanted to know.

"Best place to mine saltpetre." Carter pointed out the obvious. "And sure neater than getting it out of a latrine!"

Caught in the light of his own stupidity, Newkirk flinched.

"The Germans like to use dowsing when they build." LeBeau pitched in. "You know, with the green hazel branch or metal wire. They won't build unless the rod tells them it is safe. And we are digging below their structures."

"Klink's worried enough about something." Hogan admitted. "And on top of this, we have Hochstetter planning to kill us with this work crew plan we're not supposed to know about. I'm actually sorry we caught Wilson's influenza epidemic in time; nothing like a good plague to keep us all indoors!"

Hogan wasn't serious. Nobody wanted to get the flu even if it meant getting out of a miserable day of slave labor under German rifles.

"What are we going to do, Colonel?"

"Right now we can't do anything." Hogan sighed. "We have no communications, no motive to distract Hochstetter, and we're down to half our men as it is from the flu. Tomorrow when we get mustered, I want every man to keep their eyes and ears open for any information, any clue that might give us an edge. There's got to be something we can do to disrupt the Maus' new engine from getting to Hitler."

"The signal's not getting to England." Baker warned. "It can get as far as Brittany or Normandy, but that's it."

"That's it?" Hogan was not happy.

"Not with what we've got. Unless you want us to pull out the radio and risk being seen..."

"Of course not." Hogan drew his arms across his chest and tipped his head down. "France...All right. Who's got the best Russian?"

Baker slowly lifted one hand.

"Baker, pop on your backup wire to France, but speak in Russian. You're planting intel straight to the Soviets. Let them know that Hitler is sitting down for a big fat cheese, and there are equally big mice around. Use the word for mice, not rats. Dismantle when you're done. Until we can get our good radio back in order, we'll be protecting that shortwave."

"мышь, not крыса, got it. What's my alias?"

"Tell them Papa Bear's calling in a favor for the Rat King."

"Who comes up with these code names?!" Baker wanted to know.

"Brothers' Grimm."

"I can't be the only one who finds that a fitting punishment."

"What about the tarps you wanted me to make, gov?"

"Right now they just look like ratty old blankets. It's safe enough."

"They ARE ratty old blankets." Newkirk protested. "You know Hochstetter. He'll wonder why we've got Size King blankets in the barracks."

"You'll have to cut them back down to bunk size, or…something."

"I'll fold 'em over and sew them up like sleeping bags. That won't take nearly as long and less damage on the cloth."

A few men muttered about Hochstetter. It didn't accomplish anything, but it felt good. They needed those blankets. Worthless as blankets, they could put the last of their espionage equipment into the bottom of the new latrine, cover it with their last oilskin, and then those ratty worthless blankets on top of that. The rough texture would grab on to the mud and make everything invisible. Then they could all take a deep breath, assured that the radio was completely safe.

"Everybody get another cup of cocoa." Hogan said sadly. "We're going to be up all night."

# # #

The rain did not ease up. Not one bit.

The prisoners had had enough. They stripped down to their basics and snuck the radio to the new latrine, covered it all up, and waited with their hearts in their throats. The rain came through for them; sliding mud and water buried everything in less than a minute.

"We'll have a swimming pond by morning." Newkirk predicted.

"Good. At least we'll be free of mud." LeBeau chattered.

"We can swim in it after the work party." Carter stamped his feet.

"Or start stocking some carp."

Baker crept out of Hogan's office (the only place with a shred of privacy). "Message received." He announced. "They're sending the Nutcracker to do something about it. At least _that's_ Tchaikovsky."

"He's the best. Now we just have to stay alive until either Hochstetter doesn't need the road any more, or the Soviets bomb the Maus' other parts off the planet."

# # #

Asking Klink to do anything that required more thought that took longer for a knee to react to a doctor's hammer was a lost deal and everyone knew it. There was also the tiny fact that Klink owed his continued survival to this (beg pardon) kneejerk reaction. Everyone else in his class had been killed in battle or shot by Hitler.

Klink wasn't going to ruin a good thing and start thinking. Not when it worked well enough for him so far. Not even Hogan could argue with his counterpart's logic. Correlation wasn't causation…unless you had the right data. Hogan was sadly the latest inheritor of a long, shut-mouthed unquantified population of humans who had succeeded in saving Klink from himself.

Be it unworthy of his wit, Hogan sort of thought of Klink as the zero in the algorithm—worthless all his own and therefore indispensable. It certainly failed to be disproven in the Stalag.

He would have been quite surprised to know that Klink was thinking of him at 3am.

# # #

Klink wasn't sleeping either.

Hogan was right about the WWI maps; Klink still had them. He was staring at them right now and wishing he could orient. The Cheese Cave had been huge and almost empty when the French bombed it back to the Stone Age. Klink suspected that was a personal retribution against Germany for laughing at their first tank—it had been worse than the Maus, and that was saying something.

Sometimes he really wished they could find it, because there had been a lot of rumours about the Cheese Cave and what it had been appropriated for during the end of the last war. Rumors, really. They weren't supposed to take them seriously.

And Klink didn't because he was told not to. At least not in public.

Burkhalter shuffled in with a yawn. "Are you still staring at that, Klink?" He demanded. "Nobody has ever found anything."

"The dowsers said not to build here." Klink put his thumb on a frighteningly huge spot on the map.

"Well they had to put the center of the camp _somewhere_ , Klink. You know. Like, the _center_." Burkhalter was trying to be patient because he needed to save his acidulous temper for Hochstetter. Needs must.

Klink didn't answer him.

Burkhalter took in the sight of the man and finally softened. There were a lot of reasons why Klink had been given the post of Stalag XIII. Anyone with a shred of influence had wormed their way out of it, but Klink's influence had been, at usual, right at the bottom of his class. It had to be a nerve-wracking thing to be in charge of a camp that might someday be reduced to a smoking crater.

There were days when he thought Klink's bizarre ability to survive without cracking up was rooted in the fact that chaos was his natural element. Chaos and disaster. He _belonged_ in it.

"From a military perspective, I can understand why the camp was built over the old depot." Klink admitted. "The Allies will never knowingly bomb their own people. But it is not honorable."

"War is not honorable." Burkhalter answered. "Not any more. Not for a long time."

"The new generation, they are clever and successful, and they are jackals."

"Or smirking tricksters like Hogan."

"I wish we had a few Hogans on our side. I would pit them against the Hochstetters."

"And I," Burkhalter helped himself to Klink's brandy, "would sell the tickets to the event." He chuckled as he doled out generous splashes. "It makes you wonder what that reprobate will do with himself after the War. Where is his purpose when we are not here for his torment?"

Klink thanked him for his own glass of brandy, but his face was unusually serious. "I already know the answer to that." He informed the surprised general. "His country sent me a letter of writ to employ in case of emergency."

"What in the world would that be?"

"As long as we have Hogan in custody, the United States will give us preferential consideration over all non-Pacific countries in prisoner exchange. We just have to agree to keep him in our custody." Klink took a healthy gulp before a flabbergasted Burkhalter.

"The Americans _want_ us to keep Hogan?"

"They feel that if he was not our prisoner, he would be theirs. Here they know where he is and he has no access to planes, the Pentagon, or their secretaries."

"They do not seem anxious to get him back."

"Would you?"

"You're going to run out of brandy tonight, Klink."

# # #

The next morning a very bedraggled Schultz began the call to muster.

Not a single POW had to exaggerate their moans and groans.

They filed out as slowly as possible before the Stalag's own personal Maginot Line of Hochstetter, Klink, and Burkhalter. Shultz stood in the fore, poor fellow.

Ankle-deep in mud, the men put themselves mostly in formation.

"Colonel." Newkirk hissed under his teeth. Schultz was bellowing pretty loudly over the rain but it made their usual ventriloquism a little tough. "We got a big problem."

"How so?" Hogan's heart clenched.

"Those blankets in the bottom of the latrine…they aren't heavy enough with the volume of water. The oilskin's trying to float. We need to throw something heavy in the bottom of the pit to keep the blankets down or the German's will see it!"

"Oh, swell." Hogan closed his eyes, which only trapped rain under his lids.

Behind him, LeBeau sneezed with enough compression to knock off his beret and interrupt Schultz. The sergeant gave him a reproachful look and resumed his speech.

"Look on the bright side." Carter shivered.

"There's a bright side?"

"If we're caught, Hochstetter won't waste any time executing us."

"There is that."

Newkirk was less complimentary. "Cor, Andrew, you always got to look on the sunny side o'things!"

And this, thought Hogan, was exactly why sarcasm made the Enigma Code redundant.

# # #

Schultz stepped backwards, which was Klink's cue to begin HIS part of muster, but Hochstetter cut in front of him. The vicious little officer began with a pronouncement as to the purpose of the unusually early hour, and how they were expected to contribute labor for…for something.

"What is he saying?" Klink whispered to Burkhalter.

"I can't hear a thing over this blasted rain." The general grumbled.

"I don't think the prisoners can either."

"Heh. Look at Hogan. He looks ready to volunteer for the firing squad."

# # #

"Does anyone know what he's saying?" Hogan managed to ask without moving his lips. Or maybe it was because they were numb with cold.

"I have no idea, but he seems to think you're gonna hate it." Carter summed up the obvious. "Cos he's sure smiling."

"I wish I _could_ hear what 'e's saying." Newkirk complained. "Klink and Burkhalter think its funny, whatever it is."

"Can't you read lips, Baker?"

"Not through this rain!"

"Would Hochstetter have me shot for stamping my feet?" Carter hissed. "I can't feel my toes!"

"Just be patient." Newkirk assured him. "They'll fall off soon enough."

"That little martinet." LeBeau sneezed again.

He meant that figuratively, but it became literal with serendipitous timing.

Hochstetter looked...

...shorter.

"I think I'm feverish." Baker worried. "I'm starting to see things."

"You're not seeing things." Hogan's eyes had popped wide. "Everybody get ready to move back on my order!"

# # #

What happened next could be summed in two sentences:

Hochstetter fell into a suddenly-birthed sinkhole.

Rats came out.

Later, it was Newkirk who came up with the unsurprising observation that the ground had accepted Hochstetter and given the Stalag its change back in the form of about one-thousand rats.

# # #

"MOVE!" Hogan barked.

It was the voice of a true commander.

Everyone obeyed, even the Germans. They knew when to follow orders.

The center of the camp had become a slippery, muddy crater. Chaos reigned. Hogan found himself on the side with the German officers and half his own men. The rest were still backing away from the sudden change in environment.

No one, not even Burkhart, knew a little guy like Hochstetter was capable of screaming—especially like *that*.

Hogan clapped his hands over his ears. It was pure protective reflex, he told himself. Not cowardice.

Klink proved his ears were not in top Pilot's order by smacking him in the back of the head.

"What is wrong with you, Hogan?"

"My ears are sensitive." Hogan snapped at Klink.

"So was mine at 20,000 feet!" Klink snapped back.

Hogan stared at Klink. His mouth was open and his eyes were wide and he didn't care one bit.

"20,000?"

"Yes!" Klink exclaimed (and over the sounds of Hochstetter, which was no small achievement). "With every battle!"

Hogan satisfied Klink with lowering his hands, but it was with the alacritive reflex given to a man when his brain is processing terrible, terrible information.

Klink flying at 20,000 feet?

So many things were clear now. So many, many things.

# # #

At the same time Hogan was playing a mental round of TAPS in honor of Klink's brain cells, KIA from frozen atmosphere with no oxygen, Carter was celebrating.

"Hey, look everybody!" Carter held up a gigantic thing or two in each hand. Under the mud it was hard to be sure. "Badger stew tonight! My treat!"

LeBeau collapsed to the earth with a moan, his hands over his face.

"You're feeding the prisoners badgers?" Burkhalter shouted.

"No! They have Red Cross rations!"

"Anybody got a knife?" Carter yelled. "Oh, wait. There's a broken bottle."

"Never mind." Burkhart closed his eyes.

"There are weapons down here!" Hochstetter was screaming. "Get me out! Hogan! I have you now!"

Every German officer above ground looked at Hogan just in time to see the American's jaw hit the tops of his boots. No one, not even his own men, had ever seen him look so surprised.

"Whaaat?"

This was so unintelligible, so far from his usual smug bastard self, that even Klink was smart enough to realize Hogan had no idea what Hochstetter was screaming about.

"Klink, go look." Burkhalter snapped. "But be careful, the ground is unstable. You don't want to land on Hochstetter."

Who would? Klink blanched and used his greater height to greater advantage. Over the pouring rain he blew on his monocle and peered over. With Schultz holding on to his other hand for dear life, the Kommandant took in the sight of a small Gestapo officer, floundering like a…flounder, in a sea of mud and still-vacating rats. It was difficult to see everything, and the sound of his guards trying to stomp, kick, or bayonet the escaping vermin was as distracting as the POW's reactions to Carter's attempts to open up his own cooking school beginning with a brace of badgers and a broken bottle for a skinning-knife. But he finally saw what Hochstetter was (still) yelling about.

"Pull me back, Schulz! Pull me back! Sergeant! Get Hochstetter out of there, snap, schnell! Hurry!" Klink was too horrified to keep to one language.

Hogan had recovered and was trying to angle for a view.

"Hogan! Get back! Now!"

Too late. Hogan saw, and he saw enough.

"Everybody run! Carter! Put down that badger! Everybody to the back of the camp!"

POWs took off.

Germans envied them.

LeBeau tripped over a rat and fell flat on his front.

Newkirk didn't pause. He scopped up the Frenchman and had him over his shoulder.

"What is it?" LeBeau yelled. "Newkirk, what's going on?"

"There's explosives in the bottom of that hole!" Newkirk panted back. A part of his mind was noting that LeBeau's extra weight was good ballast when running through solid mud.

"WHAT!" LeBeau knew _they_ didn't have anything to do with it. "German?"

"Been there for the last **Last** war, it sounds like. Cor, I didn't know I could understand Germans better when they're screaming!"

Wet, sodden POW's slogged against the back of the camp. They didn't mind lying in the mud as they watched frantic Germans toss ropes down the pit. In slow motion, Hochstetter's shiny black staff car slid forward, gently and inexorably, into the hole with a squelching GLORP.

"That was a lovely car." Broughton mourned. "I loved it. I loved repairing it…and sabotaging the repairs…and letting the air out of the tires…"

"Wow." Slim pointed. "Did you know Hans had a rat phobia?"

"Is that why they're sitting on him?"

"That's probably the excuse. But I think Hans is yelling something about turnips."

"I s'pose that answers that." Newkirk maneuvered to a cozy spot-in other words, where the rain wasn't falling directly on his head. "The Cheese Cave was a secret ammo dump, and the rats were hiding there because it was the only dry place in the camp."

"Not anymore. I want your soap back, Newkirk." LeBeau told him. "We're back to baiting them again."

Someone had opened the kennel. Oscar's dogs leaped into the fray, barking happily.

"Leastwise they won't have to feed the dogs tonight." Addison commented.

"Yeah, Hans can put their kibble in with the stew. Waste not, want not."

"Aw." Baker saw Hochstetter hoisted up like a very filthy fish. "Too little. Throw him back, boys!"

Hochstetter's muddy gloves were too slick. He fell back in.

"I didn't really mean that!"

"What now, gov?" Newkirk wondered.

Hogan thought about it. He smiled.

Chaos ruled Stalag XIII and he didn't have a thing to do with it.

It felt great.

"We're going to watch the show." He leaned back in the mud, spine to the Barracks wall, and calmly settled his cap over his forehead. "We're just going to watch."


End file.
